This time last week the field was alive with loads of swallows.
Today they are all gone – having fattened up in a feeding frenzy before heading south.
October is a pause.
The field is on hold, having a tea and biscuit break, before it all starts again.
The Summer visitors have gone and the Winter visitors are not here yet (though I think I heard an odd field fare the other day).
Old friends come back to the fore. There’s the robins, who always hop around the camp hoping for a scrap. Their songs taking a rightful place once again. This is the time of year I start seeing more stone chats, though they are year-round residents. Meadow pipits are grouping. Goldfinches are stripping the bare thistle and teasel heads of seeds.
It rained earlier, and I can see a fox pawing at the earthworms, picking at them like bar snacks. If you watch a fox closely you’ll see they are more cat-like than dog-like – you can see it in how they stalk and how they pounce.
There’s a late parasol mushroom in the field. Not looking at its best, so worth leaving alone. But the earth has pushed up the stump balls, the boletus coming in stages, the field mushrooms bursting through the cow manure, and lots of slimy looking little brown mushrooms that don’t even look like they want to be eaten.
As I walk across the field I check the panels of corrugated iron I laid down earlier in the year. I put two along the edge of a stream where they would catch the sun, hoping a grass snake would use it. I’ve seen grass snakes in my stream before, but still not on the iron. It’s turned a bit chilly lately, and the snakes and reptiles have disappeared.
I wonder if a vole or mouse is using the iron shelters.
No, nothing.
I put another piece of iron beneath a dead oak. Nothing there either.
The last one is in the middle of the field, as a kind of ‘catch all and let’s see what happens’.
Nope. Nothing there either.
I’m a little disappointed, but they’ve not been in place that long, just a few months, so there’s still time for something to find them and move in. Equally so the mounds of brush and broom I collected. Again, I was hoping an adder or common lizards may find them, or a hedgehog use it as a winter home.
No signs of that either. If nothing else, they give home to hundreds of insects and that will attract birds and other wildlife.
The field is now resting. It’s first Summer, under my ownership, has been. I’ve tasted blackberries from my own blackberry bushes. Whilst sitting here I’ve had my own chestnuts from my own chestnut trees. I’ve scrumped an apple from the orchard next door. I have a service tree in the field as well, so I’m looking forward to doing something with the chequers in a month or two.
The line of poplars separating my field from the one next door will be home to field fares in the coming weeks. Red wings and other thrushes will also come by. The kestrel will also be working the field, and so will the little owl that I last saw a couple of weeks ago. The voles and mice will be needing those iron shelters at some point.
Think I’ll rest with the field now. Time for my own tea and biscuit break beneath the aspens.
Today they are all gone – having fattened up in a feeding frenzy before heading south.
October is a pause.
The field is on hold, having a tea and biscuit break, before it all starts again.
The Summer visitors have gone and the Winter visitors are not here yet (though I think I heard an odd field fare the other day).
Old friends come back to the fore. There’s the robins, who always hop around the camp hoping for a scrap. Their songs taking a rightful place once again. This is the time of year I start seeing more stone chats, though they are year-round residents. Meadow pipits are grouping. Goldfinches are stripping the bare thistle and teasel heads of seeds.
It rained earlier, and I can see a fox pawing at the earthworms, picking at them like bar snacks. If you watch a fox closely you’ll see they are more cat-like than dog-like – you can see it in how they stalk and how they pounce.
There’s a late parasol mushroom in the field. Not looking at its best, so worth leaving alone. But the earth has pushed up the stump balls, the boletus coming in stages, the field mushrooms bursting through the cow manure, and lots of slimy looking little brown mushrooms that don’t even look like they want to be eaten.
As I walk across the field I check the panels of corrugated iron I laid down earlier in the year. I put two along the edge of a stream where they would catch the sun, hoping a grass snake would use it. I’ve seen grass snakes in my stream before, but still not on the iron. It’s turned a bit chilly lately, and the snakes and reptiles have disappeared.
I wonder if a vole or mouse is using the iron shelters.
No, nothing.
I put another piece of iron beneath a dead oak. Nothing there either.
The last one is in the middle of the field, as a kind of ‘catch all and let’s see what happens’.
Nope. Nothing there either.
I’m a little disappointed, but they’ve not been in place that long, just a few months, so there’s still time for something to find them and move in. Equally so the mounds of brush and broom I collected. Again, I was hoping an adder or common lizards may find them, or a hedgehog use it as a winter home.
No signs of that either. If nothing else, they give home to hundreds of insects and that will attract birds and other wildlife.
The field is now resting. It’s first Summer, under my ownership, has been. I’ve tasted blackberries from my own blackberry bushes. Whilst sitting here I’ve had my own chestnuts from my own chestnut trees. I’ve scrumped an apple from the orchard next door. I have a service tree in the field as well, so I’m looking forward to doing something with the chequers in a month or two.
The line of poplars separating my field from the one next door will be home to field fares in the coming weeks. Red wings and other thrushes will also come by. The kestrel will also be working the field, and so will the little owl that I last saw a couple of weeks ago. The voles and mice will be needing those iron shelters at some point.
Think I’ll rest with the field now. Time for my own tea and biscuit break beneath the aspens.
