Being laid up with Covid - or rather, laid low by it, plus the sudden death of my lovely cousin, Heather - I've decided to cheer myself up by looking back over the September walks I went on with Cwtch before illness struck.
We visited our usual haunts, including the various woods on Purdown:
Pale Plantation is looking very autumnal already due to the early leaf drop from the horse chestnuts, and the trees in the park are colouring up too, especially the hawthorns ...
water mint, blackberries and haws, cyclamen
... though the really big change from summer is the flood of light into the summer-dark woods, making deep-thicket skulkers like Cwtch and me feel quite exposed.
Long Wood
The last hole in the ground Cwtch will stick her snoot into for some time
We did try a different route up onto the ridge one day, via the lower part of Sir John Lane, where there was another small, feral wood to explore and the open spaces of South Purdown.
Below Purdown, the River Frome is flowing more volubly than it was a month or so ago, although it's still quite low.
Wickham Glen
Snuff Mills
A tributary of Stoke Brook, which is a tributary of Bradley Brook, which is a tributary of the River Frome, at Webbs Wood, Three Brooks Nature Reserve
Meanwhile, the grass that was so sere is now green again, having completely forgotten the hot, dry summer.
Kings Weston Down at Blaise
assorted fungi
It's a funny thing, but you can sit for hours a week in an office, say, and hear nothing of any interest at all - just what offers the local carvery had on last weekend and how a certain dress from ASOS is so cheap, you could wear it once and throw it away and it wouldn't matter (yes, really!) - and yet bump into a volunteer stacking cherry laurel logs by the side of a path, have a chat for five minutes, and learn that a) cherry laurel wood contains cyanide, which is why you shouldn't burn it; b) there are nightjars in the woods - here in North Bristol! - which he knows because he found a feather and would you like to see a photo of it?!; and c) there's another wood just a mile or so away, which is fabulous at bluebell time and which you didn't even know existed.
So, even though it's another six months till the bluebells start coming out, we decided to take a look at the wood, which is called Thirty Acre Wood and part of the Kings Weston estate.
As you enter the open space above it, there's a view down to nearby Avonmouth and the River Severn, which includes the newer bridge.
I found the wood quite hard to get around - it's spread over a series of rises and dips - but despite the usual type of rubbish that blights feral urban woods, it had its moments and I'll definitely aim to get back there next spring to see the promised swathes of blue.
Why would you screw some really old screws into a fallen tree, at a level too high to be a boot scraper (even if it wasn't in the middle of a wood)?
Part of a very extensive badger sett
A piece of carpet, released back into the wild and living its best life
We also visited a couple of places we hadn't been to for a fair while, namely, Narroways, where there are ponies within a couple of miles of the city centre ...
St Werburgh's
Horfield Brook
... and Splatts Abbey Wood, tucked behind the MOD complex.
light emerald moth
Trees are still dropping large parts for themselves following a second excessively hot and dry summer. I think the woods could be pretty dangerous to walk in this winter, especially if there's an increase in the frequency of storms, as feared.
One of the paths at Snuff Mills is still reminding me each time I go there of where I am.
As for the season of falling feathers, it's just about done, though there have been some great finds this September:
tawny owl, jay, magpie, ring-necked parakeet, thrush, green woodpecker, sparrowhawk, buzzard, wren
This includes my biggest find this year, a buzzard primary ...
... and, on the same day, the joint smallest, my second wren primary of the season ...
I think it's largely by chance that I spot wren feathers; they are so tiny and I struggle to make out the pattern on the anterior vane without reading glasses. (I still live in hope of finding a tail feather one day, though.)
My September tally also includes these two green woodpecker tail feathers to add to the two I'd already found in August, and absolute beauties they are too.
Finally, two more jay covert feathers to make a (surely final) total of sixteen - if you don't count the thirty-four I found at a predation site on Purdown, which I don't because you can't really celebrate finding all those feathers at once, and I'd much rather the bird still had them, even if it's the circle of life and all that.
