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There is no question that autumn is here and that winter is about to burst upon us. How do I know this?
It’s not because the leaves, acorns and horse chestnuts are falling in our local woods or because mushrooms and toadstools are bursting out everywhere. Or because the paths in it are covered with the feathers that the birds are discarding in favour of their winter plumage. Or because the ant hills are beginning to shrink under the weight of the material the ants have placed over them in the summer months. Nor even that the trees and bushes are loaded with berries, though the brambles are dying back.
It’s because the first flock of Brent Geese have flown in from their summer months in Siberia and are argumentatively and very noisily setting up home in the salt marsh off Two Tree Island in Essex. More flocks will shortly be joining them and the noise will in a few days be indescribable. These birds will vacation here for the winter, feeding on the eel-grass, before returning to Siberia in the spring.
Normally these birds arrive mid-October and they are early this year. Does this, and the amount of berries on the holly tree in our garden, suggest a hard winter this year? We will have to wait and see.
.
There is no question that autumn is here and that winter is about to burst upon us. How do I know this?
It’s not because the leaves, acorns and horse chestnuts are falling in our local woods or because mushrooms and toadstools are bursting out everywhere. Or because the paths in it are covered with the feathers that the birds are discarding in favour of their winter plumage. Or because the ant hills are beginning to shrink under the weight of the material the ants have placed over them in the summer months. Nor even that the trees and bushes are loaded with berries, though the brambles are dying back.
It’s because the first flock of Brent Geese have flown in from their summer months in Siberia and are argumentatively and very noisily setting up home in the salt marsh off Two Tree Island in Essex. More flocks will shortly be joining them and the noise will in a few days be indescribable. These birds will vacation here for the winter, feeding on the eel-grass, before returning to Siberia in the spring.
Normally these birds arrive mid-October and they are early this year. Does this, and the amount of berries on the holly tree in our garden, suggest a hard winter this year? We will have to wait and see.
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