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Winter Thrush at Halloween

22/10/2020

Birch catkins and witch's broom

I remember winter thrush resplendent. Fieldfare erupt from tall trees in scolding call and fly in sunlit colour. Redwing of whistling note, a smaller thrush with a streak of warm colour half-hidden by the wing, and with pale supercilium. Mistle thrush sounding like a football rattle. Winter thrush close, intimate, and abundant.
Halloween is high season for migration, when flocks are borne on a north-east wind. Halloween, when the clocks go back, the nights draw in and the woods are golden.

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Patterdale Red Deer Rut: an aura

16/10/2020

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Raven

Red deer and raven, aura of the fells in October. Stags roar, bellow and grunt- notes of low horn and tuba. Accompanists in the seasonal ritual of the rut. Posturing, if we could see the action unfolding somewhere in the enveloping mist A symphony of stags scattered over the amphitheatre of the fells. Each responsive to the other’s voice, loud, resonant, yet secret. Raven is the saxophonist in a riff of stag and scavenger, then an interlude of silence until a stag bellows and they're off again.

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Mistlethrush, fieldfare and redwing: Helsington Barrows

11/10/2020

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Mistle Thrush

Not a cloud in the sky early on a bright October morning. In the parkland habitat of Helsington Barrows the sun highlights anthills, a faerie light through tall larch now shadowed by gathering cloud. A clash of darkness and light. I hear mistlethrush, here in small flocks in August. And my focus sharpens as I catch a thrilling call. Winter thrush from the North, autumn migrants whose arrival on a such a warm October morning, seems anomalous, although the season is right.
Hush, be still and on with the cloak of invisibility. Look and listen. The wildwood will come alive.

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RIver Kent: salmon leap at Stramongate Weir

5/10/2020

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Stramongate Weir

Inky black and smooth, the water is held back by the weir, then plunges down in a cascade, into white water where a goosander is fishing, flapping her wings on the edge of the churn of white water. Sounds of falling water and of boulders rumbling in the bed of the river. A swan drifts toward the weir, hesitates, and drops white into turbulent white.

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Winter Thrush at Halloween

Patterdale Red Deer Rut: an aura

Mistlethrush, fieldfare and redwing: Helsington Barrows

RIver Kent: salmon leap at Stramongate Weir

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