September / October.
It was fifty five days in the end, about eight weeks, between one full dry day and the next. These days were from sometime in late July to sometime in early September. Not then the best of summers. The weather was that bad that our summer swallows and house martins just didn’t hang around, normally we can enjoy them well into September and I have known there to be young house martins still in the nest in October. House martins had a terrible year up here, what with the late cold wet spring holding them back and then that long wet spell during the summer months, but maybe they managed to get the one brood away during sunny June and early July. I missed the swallows in September, they should have been there, but had had enough. (OK so there was the odd one, but not the family groups hawking about the sunny September meadows like there should have been). Not a good breeding season all round, from eagles failing due to cold wet and windy weather to butterflies having a very poor year.
Do I get fed up with all the rain, of seeing on the weather charts the whole country bathed in sunshine except for us here in the northwest time and again, sometimes, but here is where I am, in the northwest highlands of Scotland, and that sounds good just saying it, it is a place that I would like to be, and am. Yes, it is one of the wettest places on earth, but the rains stop, the clouds lift from the hills by the sea, the sun shines through them and onto the tattered shreads of all of that breaking up cloud blown on by fresh sea winds, and the sky becomes blue before the rains come again. During all of that the light that shines on and through the clouds and onto this sealand is like no other and is so of the west coast. I have met people here who unlike me have been all over this incredible, stunning, mind blowingly amazing planet who have said that the west coast of Scotland is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and part of it and what makes it so is its climate. Those who come and know and expect that climate are rewarded with being in one of the most beautiful places on earth, and those who don’t, well, let them go to their sun drenched crowded beaches abroad. There are beaches here, wild ones that you’ll have to walk to and find, and if you do then you’ll likely find that the beach is all your own, and, you might even get drenched in sunshine too, if you’re lucky, but if not, beautiful all the same.
Going back to the very end of August and on the 31st, flying into warm southerly winds and drifting curtains of drizzly rain, is that you again, back from your summer up north, whimbrel? I wasn’t sure at first, whimbrel or curlew, so tried to call them with as best a whimbrel trill as I could muster, good enough, a whimbrel reply, lovely birds, lovely calls. More northern upland waders in early August, golden plover in fields by day and by night flying south and calling over head, you can’t help but look up, thinking you might see them, instead, stars, the moon, and we’ve had some beautiful moonlit nights. I try to imagine being a bird flying along side others up in the cold night sky, try to feel the wind and cold air on my face and body as they would, to hear the beating of wings right beside mine, to see the moon above and its light on the sea below, to hear those piercing contact calls right there in my ear. Another wader, redshank, also on route from the north calling in the dark of night, their calls reminding me of Norfolk and the salt marshes there. One night, on opening the door those most evocative of northern voices came out of the black sky, whooper swans, all thoughts and intentions in that moment and for a few more until I could hear them no more were lost as once more I was up there and away with them. Away with the fairies…away instead with wild swans by the light of the moon. Another night bird that’s very vocal in the autumn that I try to be with in my minds eye when I hear it in its secret woodland home, perched on a gently swaying bough, do you turn your great round soft feathered head and gaze up at passing swans through the tree tops with those big round brown tawny owl eyes before casting them back down to the ground in search of night mice?
An early autumn gale caught the trees still wearing a full and heavy summer dress of leaves, tearing a few branches from them, and, old oak, clad also in ivy, too much for you this time, down you fell leaving a space now that you have slowly grown old in and filled these past one hundred and fifty to two hundred years. I’ve known you a while, walking past you among all those others, but maybe I didn’t really notice you until now that you’ve left that space in the wood. It’s sad that you have fallen, but you have let in the light and where your shadow has been for decades now there will be light and sunshine on the wood floor, for flowers, for bees and butterflies, and perhaps for another young oak that will grow into and take your place.
After so much rain, so much greyness, when the sun does come out again everything seems all the more beautiful. A September meadow full of the blue globes of devils bit scabious, each one with a deep blue heart and a lighter bright blue edge when looking at them against a low autumn sun. And every single hair on every bee feeding on them, and every single blade of grass and grass stem, and every single head of seed, and every thread of spiders web, and every drifting dust mote and the beating of every tiny insect wing above the meadow, all shining, all aglow with golden gilded September sunlight. At the side of a track, its verge full again with blue blooms, and on them, amazing, perfect, even after so much rain, four peacock butterflies, so close…look at them, how can anyone walk by such beauty, how and from where did they get those colours, those patterns, that perfect form. Hawking a mountain pool, back and forth, back and forth, the water and its shining wings all a glitter in the warm sun, common hawker dragonfly, how different that vision is to the one of the golden ringed dragonfly half submerged and holding onto life in the rain and cold in the summer, that dragonfly had not found a good sheltered place to sit out the weather, whereas the hawker had.
I’ve had a few days on the hill, finding them never more peaceful than during September. I often wonder about the hills at this time of the year and in winter. A wood and its trees, they sleep, you can sense that, feel it, but when in the hills sometimes I struggle to sense anything, they are not dead or lifeless, but to and from them life returns in the spring and autumn. They are so very very old, the hills. On that sloping granite slab, those stones sit and have there sat ever since the very last millimetres of glacial ice melted away beneath them, and they have not moved since. What changes those stones have seen to the hills, the wild wood coming and going, the footfall of lynx and bear, and of wolf packs, all gone…it is of these losses that the silent hills speak, their silence shouts out across the open spaces of all that is lost that should still be. Two young golden eagles were low over head, a second year bird, and a third or fourth year bird. They seemed to be hanging around, sorry, I have no gun and I’ll not be shooting any deer today, (and not ever) that’s what they were hoping I’m sure, and down and at the gralloch they would have been. Hard hungry times ahead for young eagles. Another raptor, seen most often here during the autumn, little kestrels, fly by then a short rise and a turn, there they stop, literally, pinned to the sky they hover.
By the sea, along the narrow strip wedged between it and the land that on this day was where the light fell and no where else, the water and the land was grey and dull to either side of this silvery sea edge, and into its dazzling brilliance flew from the waters edge turnstone and ringed plover, not seen for the bright light until they rose and called, flying a circle and landing again to resume their busy low tide feeding. The same sea side, a different day, two buzzards kept their distance from but kept with two sea eagles to see that they went away. They drifted slowly from east to west, into the wind without a single beat of their immense wings. One, the leading bird, angled back those wings and accelerated away, the following bird seemed less sure of its self, and struggled with that wind, and so instead it gave up trying to follow and turned and let the wind take it inland rather than along the coast, a youngster still with a lot to learn about winds and flying. The sun was out now and then that day, and when it was I spotted the tiniest of butterflies among the short grasses and flowers that grow at the back of the stony beach, seen once in a while here and usually by the sea, a real gem, the small copper.
Into October, a real gale, those sea horses have been waiting somewhere, now they speed down the sound spurred on by that rushing sea wind, so white they are on the deepest of blues. Red admirals graced the garden in October sunshine, another perfect butterfly beauty, amazing. Descending a steep slope, coming back into the trees at the top of the wood, flying past below at speed with the sun on their backs, mistle thrushes, one after the other, onto a rowan bursting with ripe red berries, and among them, the first winter redwing, glad to see them. Many more followed later in the month, along with fieldfare. Although I’ve seen neither in quite the big flocks that can occur, there have been those autumn thrush days, when it seems that almost every where and in every bush and tree there are redwings and fieldfare, with mistle and song thrush and blackbirds among them. I love it too when parties of redwing fly from trees like leaves in a gusty wind. And love it when you hear the chack-chack of fieldfare and look about for them, then find them tumbling from the sky as though that were from where they had come. Nice to have singing birds at this time of the year after the quiet of late summer. Robins in their winter gardens, and wrens, visiting cheerful coal tits, a great tit too sang a few notes and starlings are singing thier entertaining songs from the rooftops, even both song and mistle thrushes have sang for brief spells on mild bright days. And heard above the sound of rushing water along a swollen river, hidden on an alder bough inches above the black turbulent depths, a most summer like song, like a summer reed warbler, a dipper. Into those rushing waters it drops and floats like a little duck, before disappearing to seek out its food in the lee of rocks on the stream bed.
A late October hill day, cold, still, but sunny, beautiful light, a golden eagle fell from a cliff edge into a wide corrie and then glided across its wide open mountain space… see you, maybe, over the winter months. Beautiful light too on those so very very beautiful autumn trees, a single sunlit golden yellow leaf on the end of a twig is as beautiful as that whole tree, as that whole hill side full of trees full of autumn colour. You just have to get in among the trees at this time of year.
I have to say, I’m glad the wet summer is gone, and glad that it is winter now, glad of the winter sun and the winter light, to see again lingering winter sunsets. Winters here in recent years have been better than the summers. (Whose to say though that this winter will be the same, I may wish yet that it was still summer time) And in just a few short weeks, the first signs of spring. Just like the sea winds bring white horses, the warming climbing sun will bring us the spring.
Seems that there is more to the marsh fritillary buttefly story, for whilst walking across the meadow where I saw that worn individual back in June, I noticed a small web dome on the ground, then another, and another, and on them, tiny caterpillars. These are the larval webs of the marsh fritillary, and in these webs the small caterpillars will spend the winter. I was delighted to find them and very pleased to think that I should be able to look forward to seeing this butterfly again next year. Those tiny caterpillars there, now, on the cold wet winter meadow, and what they will become encapsulates all of that new life….waiting.
Other sightings that I’ve been told about, male hen harrier, otters, pine martins, dolphins, basking sharks, and…and...on the 1st of November, a swift!
Stephen_hardy@hotmail.co.uk
