September 2023
A warm, humid and often wet month. Birds begin to return to the garden, whilst summer and winter are represented in the skies by swallows and geese.
Blickling lake
Sweet chestnuts
Conservation churchyard, St Andrew's Church
White Bryony. Also seen in flower.
Speckled wood butterfly on Guelder rose
Damsons
Damsons eaten and some kept for planting the pits. Marabella (Mirabelle) plums not ripe yet. Hops festoon hedgerows. A dried hogweed stalk is used as a raft to rescue a drowning dragonfly.
Between the split trunk of an ancient oak, a juvenile kestrel hawks over an empty pasture.
Overcast but humid!
A view across the fields
Beneath the cherry tree
Who goes there?
The Purr-fect poser, "Nutbush"
The river Yare encroaches, Surlingham
Easy dabbling for ducks
River Yare
Robin, garden
Wild pansies, garden
Burning bright
Warham
Shipwreck tart
North gate, Holkham
Holkham deer park
Noble lodgings, House martins at Holkham Hall
Hat weather
Little Egret, Holkham lake
Greylag geese
A few Greylags at Holkham lake, but the Barnacle geese have departed. Looking, this month, for the first sighting of the Pinkfeet returning, whether from home or at the coast.
9th/10th Very hot/humid, then breaks quite mundanely on Tues 12th with grey cloud, heavy rain, cool wind. Tomato plants are blown down, roses bowed.
11th Dark Bush-cricket in garden and calling in the starry-skied evening. I look for the Nishimura comet at 4:30, but the skies have clouded over.
Hawk-moth caterpillar, garden
Early morning light
Cherry tree
Swallows on telegraph wire
Honeysuckle, garden
After the rain
Spindle berries
Rum weather with cold winds, humidity, burning sun and rainclouds. Autumn tree planting with Wild Service tree pips and Marabella plum stones.
Before the rain, Blickling
19th Very windy, gusty with one of many low front passing over. Northern lights are reported as southerly as the North Norfolk coast.
Pink-footed geese
20th Sepember: I hear my first pinkfeet of the season, a small skein passing over Holkham.
Rain, rain, rain.
Lady Anne's Drive, Holkham
Autumnal pudding, Pear Frangipane tart, cream and custard.
Titchwell
Great-white Egret, Titchwell
Female Wasp spider, Titchwell
Black-tailed Godwit on a mission
Sun, sea and seaweed at Titchwell
Pinkfeet skeins
Hello Moo
Wood Pigeons
Cormorant skein
Swallows hawking above cattle
Mallard gathering, Salt's Hole Holkham
Herring gulls, Cormorant skein far off
Catch me if you can, House Martin
Red Admiral underside, Cley
23rd: The evenings "they pull in now" after the Autumn Equinox. Tomato cassoulet is cooked for Sunday dinner, root vegetables an accompaniment: parsnips a true scent of autumn.
Rose, garden
The incoming tide
Hoofprint out from the surf
Guillemot
Drinking snacks, and a very well-behaved pooch
Raven
Gull trio
Gannet juvenile
Pinkfeet skein
30th: From the garden a robin sings, but also a whistling, sub-singing blackbird practicing his song.
Grey skies over the coast road
Lapwings and Teals, Wells
Black-headed Gulls, Blakeney
My sounds of September
Robin
Rooks
Pink-footed Geese
