Autumn is beginning to assert itself, in the trees' changing colours and in the dead grass and the bales of straw that litter the Dairy Meadow, and in....
....the pink-footed geese calling as they fly south, though the skeins we've seen so far have all been small. Other birds are on the move. For example....
....we've welcomed back the increasingly large flock of rock doves, the ancestral line of the city pigeon, which we haven't seen since they arrived in numbers to stay with us along the shore over last winter. Then there are the local birds which are staking out a winter territory, such as....
....a pair of stonechats balancing awkwardly on waving grass stems along the shore.
The sea buckthorn is flaunting a slightly disappointing crop of berries, their ripening usually a sign that the blackcaps will soon be back.
Yet summer clings on in species which seem delicately toughened against the arrival of colder weather. Campion is one of the earliest each year to burst into flower, and yet will still be thrusting out new buds, despite the falling temperatures, well into October.
Autumn is beginning to assert itself, in the trees' changing colours and in the dead grass and the bales of straw that litter the Dairy Meadow, and in....
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