Fresh overnight snow on the Langdales to the west and on the northern fells. The Howgills bare.  A blue sky.  Bowfell shrugged-off cloud to reveal snow.  Veils of rain and a rainbow. 
High pressure lasted into Sunday which was  all about the skies.  Aeolus, god of the winds, had been at work and the rhythms and patterns of cloud were mesmerising.  By mid-day the drama was all over and a gloom prevailed. 

Goosander are in town and if you stroll riverside through Kendal you will sense them preparing to breed.   This is the season to see their courtship behaviour and to marvel at their beautiful plumage,  their colours most vibrant right now.  
You may see the courting pairs in town but goosander nest in tree holes, in niches in rocks, and there lies the mystery.  To find a goosander nest would be quite something. 
If only. 

A day of fleeting floodlight, the low winter sun creating highlights of the season. 
Skeggles Water is a slow reveal,  hidden amongst  low fells, screened by last summer’s tall sedges in  rough-and-tumble tussocks.  Hydro sere, where   becks flow into the tarn and reeds take hold in shallow water.  Hydro sere, where water and vegetation merge and intermingle. Skeggles Water has hidden depths who knows where? Terra firma is not the nature of hydrosere.  Tarns appear and disappear, ephemeral.   In summer, a weave of aquatic plants hides the tarn in a shimmer of green..   

​'Isn't it rather a cheat to bring birds close by setting out feeders crammed with peanuts and seed?'
Perhaps, but it gives the perfect opportunity to study birds whilst they're feeding and settled.  Then you can wander the Foulshaw Moss reserve and find them for yourself. And should you chance upon them elsewhere in Cumbria you'll know what you're hearing and seeing. And viewing birds from the Foulshaw hide, you are close enough to take photographs without disturbing them.

Good light and a mackerel sky on a mild late-December day.  Whooper swans –the trumpeters, grazing in pastures.  They arrive from Iceland in November, returning in March.  Chevron of geese calling overhead.  From  the coastal path we hear the plaintive call of redshank and whistling widgeon. And  the bubbling call of  curlew I had thought to hear only in spring  display flight.

All through autumn and into winter I've been on a quest, following redwing and fieldfare. Hearing their contact calls as  flocks flew overhead to settle in the tops of high trees, distant trees. Sometimes, the experience is all- forget the photographs they're not going to happen. On Christmas Day a lone redwing  sat sunlit in our garden birch.  He returned on Boxing Day but it was cloudy and dull.
​ A supercilium defines the bird, a pale  eyebrow.  Thrush-like chevrons on the breast and where breast meets under-wing a rusty red  which gives the bird its name. Zoom in further and colour shows but focus is lost.  For now, my best redwing image.

Fresh snow on the Langdale Pikes.  The dark cleft of Dungeon Ghyll is visible, some twelve miles as the raven flies.
​Snow not only on the panorama of fells but on Scout Scar. The face of stone walls  patterned with snow, trees outlined in snow. But already the drip, drip, drip of a rapid thaw tells that it won't last. 

 April 2019 and  trees sheltering the feeders were alive with birdsong.  You may hear redpoll in woodland fringes but they're restless, so hard to see.  In a glade at Foulshaw Moss Cumbria Wildlife invites you to a close encounter - look and listen.  Birds gather in the trees and come down to the feeders: reed bunting, tree sparrows, goldfinch-  and  the sudden flash of a sparrowhawk.   All that feed is expensive so posters ask for our support. I delighted in the Foulshaw readpoll last spring and one of my images features..  

Floodlight on Lord Crag and Nab Scar, fiery grasses and bracken, a glow of gold   through the hanging wood.   Shielded by fells, Rydale lies in shadow and a deep frost.  Tomorrow is the first day of winter, of meteorological winter, and it’s below freezing.  Below Loughrigg Fell the woodland canopy billows like ice-clouds.  Slender branches are filmed with rime-ice, like antler velvet.  Sunlight in a sky of blue, the morning calm and still.  The flaming heights, the hanging wood and the frost-pastures below the Coffin Route are mirrored in Rydale Water.

A deep frost on a still and overcast morning.  The ground hard,  ice on poached ground.  Pastures of frosted grass, lichens on limestone paler than ever and cushions of moss spiked with crystals of ice.
The soft chacking call of fieldfare in the top of a hawthorn.  A sole bird visible but he calls to companions hidden amongst a tangle of branches. Only flight reveals them. 
Later, a group of half a dozen fieldfare flew calling, toward Helsington Barrows.

Berries and fallen leaves lie on the sodden grass beneath the whitebeam. Standing  beneath the tree, I look up through branches sunlit and shadowed, through red berries to the blue beyond.  Listening to a blustery wind that animates the tree, setting it dancing.  The fiercest gusts make the boughs creak as as the tree flexes and sways. Whitebeam is a beautiful  tree and responsive to the wind. It rises behind a dry stone wall that flutes the wind through its crevices, standing sturdy and unmoved.

Berries are abundant this autumn and I know few as striking as the fruit of the spindle tree.  In early November, I'm seeking the perfect spindle laden with fruit and with leaves all shades of rose.  It's rare to find perfection.  Sometimes autumn winds wreak havoc with the leaves, stripping the shrub.  This autumn, I found a shrub by the lake at Sizergh with splendid foliage and few fruit.
Near Helsingon Church was a spindle rich in fruit, caught in sunlight,  with few greenish leaves.
The pink seed capsules split to reveal orange seeds and here you can see the capsule splitting to release its seeds. 

The gardens at Sizergh Castles are a joy. On our last visit the motif was butterflies, today it's autumn fruit and winter thrush.
Leaves fall from the trees but the early sun vanishes and the light is poor. Flights of redwing overhead, the small and slender thrush with a high-pitched contact call- this morning they are silent.  Fieldfare amongst them but they are silent too. The birds alight high in the canopy and it's hard to make out detail.  Fieldfare and redwing are shy birds and the last leaves  conceal their numbers.  
Bunches of purple grapes on the vine against the lichened brick wall.   Dahlias and a drift of Spanish daisies. 
We come upon a bed of Chinese lanterns and a single fruit within the remnant of its outer casing. 

Just look at the colourful plumage of this bearded tit.  The bright orange bill, the dove grey head and those long black moustachios down over his white breast.  His mantle is a warm russet-orange and his wings are streaked with white and black.  A strikingly handsome bird well-lit on a day of cloudless blue sky.
In spring, he feeds on insects.  In autumn and winter his diet is reed seeds and grit in this feeding tray is an aid to digestion.  The RSPB  entice the birds out of the reeds for us to admire. 

Stepping out of the car at Otter Bank, I heard fieldfare.  For me, the first of the season and always a thrill.  
We headed for Whinfell Tarn and Black Moss Tarn and we heard and saw mixed flocks of starling and fieldfare along the route.  Abundant hawthorn berries were the attraction.  A flock of starling is a noisy, chattering affair and you had to be alert to catch the call of fieldfare amongst them.  The morning grew brighter so sunlight caught the more colourful fieldfare as they flew.

Below the cliff, the hanging wood is a secret place.  Exposed to the south-westerlies, trees lose their leaves quickly. Birch are almost bare,  The last whitebeam leaves linger among  clusters of rich red berries. With dark red hawthorn berries on shrubs rooted in scree.
On a calm October morning the sun illuminates the limestone cliff where it rises sheer from a scree buttress, a focal point.   Trees are outlined against the distant fells. Curves and kinks of the cliff-edge give shifting perspectives along your way.

An inspirational day, at last.  A pacy drama of sunlight and louring cloud, a bombast of cloud that threatened - and held. back.
​Until we reached Kendal Race Course where the clouds unleashed their load. Water streamed down  Brigsteer Road and we reached home, soaked again. Who cares? The morning was magnificent and I have a cache of images to contemplate.  The high drama of cloudscape. 

The River Kent is a short, fast-flowing river which rises and falls fast.  Last night the rain lashed down and trees thrashed about in the wind. Mild enough, but relentless rain.  A gurgling dawn of louring cloud. This morning we will return to the river to see how things are.
The weir below Stramongate Bridge is dramatic, a cascade of amber water with a loud churning of rocks below the fall.  When the river is in spate the shoals of rock and gravels are submerged and the waterbirds seek the shelter of bankside reeds upstream, and of eddies.

Unsettled is the keynote of the weather, through summer and autumn. A weather-motif which mirrors our unsettled politics.  Political turbulence is a distraction from the all important question of the impact of Climate Change and species loss.
So,  carpe diem, seize the day.  Seize the sunrise, a moment of glory. The town below lies in darkness but wildlife is wakeful.  Jackdaws take wing at first light.

​Ratings for BBC Parliament are up, soaring viewing figures.    Parliament Live,  matters of moment.  Here and now, of our times. Momentous.  
The Supreme Court gives its judgement that prorogation was unlawful and John Bercow,  Speaker of the House, declares business will resume next day at 11. 30 am on Wednesday 25th September.  Parliament will resume, prorogation ‘never happened.’
So what is the significance of an intricate spider's web picked-out in water droplets?