September 2023: Quick Roundup

 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

Wood pigeon juvenile

6:00am, dawn

 

Tomatoes, garden

 

 

 

Rooks on telegraph wire

 

Early morning light

Cherry tree

Swallows on telegraph wire

 

 

Dusk, River Yare

 

Dusk

Blickling lake

 

 

 

Honeysuckle, garden

 

 

 

 

After the rain

 

Spindle berries

Looking over the water

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

Leaden reflections

Mallard gathering, Salt's Hole Holkham

Herring gulls, Cormorant skein far off

Holkham village

 

 

Rain in the east

 

Wood Pigeon in residence

 

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

 

 

 

 

Autumn leaves, 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

August 2023: Quick Roundup

 August 2023

 

Changeable days, below-average temperatures and a wind-down to autumn.

A wet month with some sunlight and humidity. 

Moulting birds hide away; there's no singing but for the woodpigeons and collared doves cooing. Juvenile Herring gulls keen, a sound of school summer holidays. Grasshoppers and crickets are busy in long grasses by day; by dusk moths and bats flutter and swoop. Most mornings, a moth head or wing is found.

Autumn's in the long shadows and cool air of mornings. Swallows and House martins are seen at the start of the month, my last Swift the 8th. Long-tailed Tits call along with Blue and Great, not only a sound of woodland, but an indicator that the tit flocks have reconvened after the breeding season.

Blickling lake

The flickering wingtips of a Swift seen on the 8th, my last for this summer.

 

River Yare

Gatekeeper (also known as hedge brown) butterfly on Hemp-agrimony

Life amongst the thistles

River Yare

 

Guelder rose berries. Pretty, but mildly toxic if eaten raw.

Berry and flower on one stem. Holly, garden.

 

The Wood pigeon pair finally succeed in raising an offspring after two nest moves and many fallen eggs from the Wisteria.

 

Pigeon juvenile aka "Pidglet" in Wisteria nest, garden.

Wasp on Fennel, garden.

The roses put out their second blooms, welcome fragrance and colour. A yellow rose and a Congo cockatoo houseplant are bought in honour of my sorely-missed cockatiel Maxi who died on the 4th.

"Maxi's rose", garden.

Cricket on rosebud, garden.

 

"Pidglet" fledged from Wisteria nest, garden.

Cornflower seedhead

Bright silver gleams from the gravel; a cornflower seedhead, looking very much like a lost piece of jewellery, an ancient sunburst.

The flowers new and spent make a for a celestial display.

Cornflowers

 

 

  Robins start singing again, short and sweet phrases that are very welcome to hear. 

By the end of the month, pheasants crow and tawny owls call. One night, two males call, then after some silence a female calls, then silence once more. In the middle of one night, a female calls very startlingly loud from the back garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blackberry thief, Sparrow juvenile

 

 

 

Starling juvenile

 

 The season of plenty begins. Blackberries, haws, hops and damsons are in abundance.

 

 

Hops

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cormorants

 

 

 

River Bure

 

 

Salhouse broad

 

 

 

Wherry on the broad

 

 

 

 

Blickling lake

 

Moon in jaws of cloud. Saturn bright above.

Intensely bright to the naked eye, the full moon rises for the second time this month, a "blue moon". With cold air and calling tawny owls, autumn feels very close at hand.

My sounds of August 

Woodpigeons

Collared Doves

Blue and great tits cheeping

Grasshoppers and crickets.

Maxi

My heart is broken. I've lost my close, bonded companion of 25 years. It's only 2 days and I don't know how to explain why this hurts so much. The depth of this cut is not known yet, as living with any death takes time, time, time. There are so many other factors involved.

I felt the first blow of this loss when Ziggy died so suddenly in 2021. My beautiful birdy--Maxima, Maxi, Sweetcheeks--slipped quietly away whilst I was so busy gardening, pulling weeds, trimming the front border, watering. There was still some warmth under her wing when I found her.

I can't look through her pictures yet (I've posted the first found on this computer). I always knew it was a privilege to have a bird, such a bird, in my life. She should have been a free, wild creature; but she had been bred to be a caged bird, she'd've been in a cage whether with me or someone else. I have been privileged to have her companionship all these years.

I'm not ready to say goodbye, but it's not my choice. Love you Maxi.

 

Scritches for Maxi

Maxi (Maxima)

Lacewing pearl cockatiel

1998-2023