Officially the first day of Autumn, signs of the changing season have been visible for several weeks. Early leaf browning, especially on Horse Chestnuts, a tribute to the long hot spell. To-day was a nigh perfect autumnal day. Blue sky with some photogenic fluffy cloud, a hardly there wind and warm. Shame that passerines did not appear, to help swell our numbers.
John Keats got it right !
To Autumn
John Keats, 1795 - 1821
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
I scoped assiduously, hoping for a range of passage waders, finding hundreds of Oystercatchers, a dozen Avocet, 20 Redshank, another 20+ black aproned Grey Plover. two Turnstones, a Ringed Plover, one Bar-tailed Godwit in summer dress and dozens of Dunlin. I was rather disappointed later, to find a pager message re two Curlew Sandpipers on the flats ! My pager only worked when it got into range of the western transmitter, 'ours' still seems to be malfunctioning.
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
The day's highlight was Snettisham Pits. We arrived within half an hour of a 6.1 high tide, to find the Wash water-covered still. We then watched the water recede very rapidly - as always on the shallow mud expanse, leaving the creeks still ebbing, taking an intrusive kayaker with it. A host of roosting terns, mainly Common with a few Sandwich, were startled into flight, landing further away. Thousands of Knot on the shoreline, periodically took to the air, morphing smoke-like, akin to a starling murmuration.
I scoped assiduously, hoping for a range of passage waders, finding hundreds of Oystercatchers, a dozen Avocet, 20 Redshank, another 20+ black aproned Grey Plover. two Turnstones, a Ringed Plover, one Bar-tailed Godwit in summer dress and dozens of Dunlin. I was rather disappointed later, to find a pager message re two Curlew Sandpipers on the flats ! My pager only worked when it got into range of the western transmitter, 'ours' still seems to be malfunctioning.
The hedgerows are heavy with scarlet haws
Blackberries are ripening
and the Dog Rose hips look good enough to eat (no thanks). The war-time Vitamin C syrup was too sweet for me.
Pam had, what we think is, a twenty two Spot Ladybird land on her arm, very small.
There are some considerations when buying a women's watch that may differ from men's watches, as you surely know. The first is that there will be far more quartz than mechanical options, and this list will include both. Stereotypically but also statistically, women don't tend to be drawn to men's mechanical movements, but replica watches many can certainly appreciate the intricate mechanics, and are arguably even more sensitive to the design aesthetics and poetic ideas that watches can represent. So don't delete mechanical watches as an option.
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