A lovely late summer morning, with a pleasant north-easterly breeze filling the air with the bitter tang of Bramble and Bracken and the soft rustle of dry grass and leaves.
As the hedgerows fill with fruit, Badgers are feasting on Blackberries – their neat ‘latrines’ are full of bright purple poo! Blackthorn is covered with ‘dusty’ midnight blue Sloes, while Bryony berries are starting to appear, like strings of shiny green beads.
Long-tailed Tits, Stonechats, Willow Warblers, Dunnocks and Blue and Great Tits are starting to feed up, emerging from their summer ‘moult’, with a Redstart darting out of a hedgerow in South Field.
Above the Saxon Field, a Kestrel hangs in the air, maintaining her position with tiny adjustments of her wings and tail, with a Buzzard gyring in steady spirals above the back meadows.
The downland turf has faded to soft shades of gold and bronze. Here and there, Carline Thistles gleam, like tiny ‘Art Deco’ sculptures among a tangle of pink and white flowered Restharrow, dark green-leaved Eyebright, with a few tiny purple Autumn Gentian flowers opening as the sun climbs higher.
Our last Orchid of the year – Autumn Ladies Tresses dapples the short turf, the white spiral of flowers (giving it it’s Latin name Spiranthes spiralis) trembling in the breeze, surrounded by the brown seedheads of Pyramidal Orchids from earlier in the summer.
Woolly Thistle and Teasel are providing plenty of food for tinkling flocks of Goldfinches along the top of the Lighthouse Field, where an oddly swaying branch beyond a wall catches my eye, eventually revealing itself to be the antlers of a Roe Deer, picking it’s way daintily through a dense tangle of Old Man’s Beard!
A quick peek inside last night’s moth trap (2 volunteers are going through it as I write), with an elegant Dusky Thorn, a dappled Bordered Straw and a prettily striped Common Swift sleeping it off near the top!
Swallows skim the pond outside the Learning Centre, almost brushing the water with their wingtips!