Whilst winter isn’t over just yet, and it’s still dark when I leave home in the morning to travel to work, spring can’t be far away as over the past week I’ve heard birds singing the dawn chorus for the first time this year. When I say birds, I really mean one species, as it has only been song thrushes so far that I have heard in these early hours, just before 6:00am.

Over course of the spring last year, I had quite a long period of poor sleep, getting less than a handful of hours a night.  Most mornings I knew it was pointless trying to get to sleep when the thrush on my roof started singing.  The song of the bird, a constantly changing pattern of two or three-times repeated calls and notes, really started to annoy me. It is actually one of the nicest songs of dawn but it can be quite sharp and piercing, and not only made me even wider awake, the pattern of the call disturbed by thoughts too.

Usually, the first calls of the dawn chorus, as winter moves into spring, would be very welcome, but when I first heard that song this week, it took me right back to those sleepless nights last year.  It’s strange how sounds (and other senses) can instantly transport the mind back to previous times.  I’ll need to shake that association from my head as the down chorus should be something wonderful not something bad. So, I’m going to force myself to get up early one weekend morning and head out into the countryside, to sit under the canopy of a wood and listen as the dawn chorus unfolds around me – that should do the trick!

Today, I made the first of my usual autumnal pilgrimages to the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s (WWT) Martin Mere reserve near Ormskirk, Lancashire. I have been there so many times that I have long lost count. I return there every year in late September or early October to witness what is, for me, a true wildlife spectacle to rival many better known natural sights.

As autumn begins to grow in its seasonal beauty, the winter visitors to our shores start to arrive. Amongst the many different species to spend the colder northern hemisphere months in the British Isles, there is one that really connects with me – the Pink-footed Goose.

These smaller geese, more petite than their canada or greylag cousins, breed just below the arctic circle, in Iceland. Only a few weeks after hatching, the goslings follow their parents from their early homes and fly across the north Atlantic all the way to our small islands. Around 240,000 pink-feet winter here, usually spending much of their time on the east coast but they use Lancashire as a first major staging post, with many thousands resting there before heading on their way further east.

I find the sounds of these geese have a soul-splitting ability. A single calling pink-foot, perhaps the lead of a small skein flying over an otherwise silent salt marsh, ‘wink-wink, wink-wink, wink-wink’, seems to be one of the loneliest and wildly remote sounds of nature. It brings visions of the wide open valleys of Iceland, and of the long struggle between their birthplace and their wintering fields here in the UK. Counter to that is the combined stirring chorus of a many thousand strong flock taking to the air in a mass force of nature. This is an invigorating, breathtaking and heart-pounding moment, a wave of noise as the flock erupts from the ground, turning the immediate sky into a flickering darkness, then splitting to form swirling clouds of avian purpose.

Three springs ago, I made a trip to Iceland with the aim, amongst other things, to see the breeding grounds of the pink-feet. I had seen them so many times in the autumn and winter, in Lancashire and in Norfolk, that I felt a great need to see them at the other end of their journey, in their other home. Feeling particularly sentimental at the time, I wrote the following:

“We drive through the high mountain passes, with small villages and scattered farms. The tall rock faces supported by brown scrub and green pasture. Out onto the valley bottom, the river flattens its course and man-made obstructions claim some of the plain. Out of shelter in the vehicle, the wind whips past and roars through the valley. Rolling clouds of sand and dust maraud across the plain, making eyes dry and scratched.

This is where they are, in small groups and pairs, preparing to nest after the long struggle north. Their colour now matching the surrounding ground. They are quiet here, now only an occasional call; not the great waves of noise from their winter glories.

Not as imagined; they are not alone here, amongst the farmland, fences and roads. Not as wild as thought but still more wild than most. A sense of seeing their other home; their real home. A sense of seeing it all, from journey start and journey finish.”

Today, there were over 20,000 pinkies at Martin Mere, a true spectacular in both sight and sound. The WWT website for the reserve has a sunset video that gives something of the emotional experience – but you have to be there to really feel it.

WWT Website

As I stepped out of my porch this morning, with the dawn still to come, I was struck by a sound coming from the tree across the road. The sad, wistful notes came from an unseen bird, standing on a branch or twig amongst the foliage. The tune came again as I left the office for the day but this time there were two calling from within the bushes, perched some way apart.

After hearing very little bird song over the past few weeks, with the post-breeding moult keeping the birds quiet, the calls stood out from the background noise.

The calls came from robins.

The robin is unusual in that it sings almost throughout the year – the moult being the only time it remains quiet for any length of time. The singing enables the robin to keep its territory across the seasons but the song changes and is in two distinct phases. As breeding approaches, the song is more powerful, purposeful and bright, attracting a mate to the ground above which it stands protector. However, after it has refreshed from a hectic breeding season and the autumn proceeds, the song changes to more melancholic notes, as if saddened by the end of another year approaching.

After spending so much time listening to bird songs and calls during the breeding bird surveys this year, the quietness that the moult brought was quite startling and I noticed it more than ever before. The autumn call of the robin, however, has lifted the silence and has opened my ears to a whole new season of sound. It won’t be long until the some of my days are filled with the sounds of wintering geese and swans, and the dusk is accompanied by the alarm calls of blackbirds as the darkness of the lengthening nights envelope the land.

We may only be just past the middle of August but we are five sixths of the way through meteorological summer and the first signs of autumn are starting to appear.

The weather has turned, after two gloriously warm and sunny months in June and July, August has so far been generally cooler and certainly wetter. Gone are the warm, bright evenings with temperatures in the high twenties and we’re now seemingly stuck with days in the high teens or low twenties, with stronger winds and more rain. However, the approach of autumn isn’t just shown in the weather.

On my early morning commute the signs are also there with the sun now not risen as I walk into the station and mists have been quite common across the fields as I head into Manchester. The series of lakes not far from the station that I pass each day had a large flock of geese on it earlier this week. In the gloom, I suspect these were Canada Geese which are an introduced species but they do move together into larger flocks in the colder months of the year.

The migration of summering birds actually starts much earlier than many people think but it is now well underway. For me, this is particularly shown by the disappearance of the swifts; one of my favourite signs of summer. Unlike the swallows and house martins, swifts have only one brood each year, therefore, they make an early departure back to Africa. The swifts from around my house have gone and last week in Lincolnshire I saw only a tiny proportion of the numbers I had seen only a couple of weeks previously. Also in Lincolnshire, I saw the first signs of the trees changing colour and this morning I noticed a few leaves turning brown in the car park I use each day.

Last weekend on a rural wander around the canal near to Beeston Castle, there were more signs that we are coming to the end of the summer with a wide variety of trees and plants laden down with the fruits of the summer – hawthorn, bramble, apple, elder and blackthorn.

I was getting back to my car, there was also large gathering of swallows skimming low over a meadow, fattening up on the insects in preparation for their own journeys south.

I used to approach summer with a certain amount of dread; spending hot meetings in client’s stuffy offices isn’t always my idea of fun, especially when it’s so nice outside. I also always used to dread the hot and sticky walk across the city centre back to the station on the way home but maybe all the exercise I have taken over the past couple of years has helped to stop me melting in my suit as I turn up at the train. I now love the summer, which is quite a transformation, however, the autumn has been my favourite season for quite a while now and I can’t wait to see what the coming ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ brings.

After going to a wet and windy guided butterfly walk around Tegg’s Nose Country Park a few weeks ago, I returned last weekend to see if I could better views.

It was certainly much better weather with the sun out and warmth in the air, although the wind was quite strong.  Butterflies and moths were very much more in evidence with many flitting around across grass and heathland.  Trying to identify them at distance was quite difficult (especially for a beginner like me!) but I did manage to get good shot of the following:

Meadow Brown

Common Blue

Gatekeeper

Also around the park, the bilberries were ripe and ready for picking, with a few visitors taking a good harvest.

The guided walk certainly increased my interest in butterflies but I might not get many more opportunities this year, particularly as the weather has taken a very autumnal turn.