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.
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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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. 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. 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. |
AuthorJan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books) Archives
March 2024
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