Thursday 25 October 2018

Local patch 34


Autumn creeps on!
We ran up the drove road across Aller Moor this morning. The just-rising sun was beginning to paint ice cream colours in the sky but night was reluctant to let go. Big flocks of starlings were arrowing low across the meadows, half a thousand at a time. They had risen in clouds from their reedy roosts and were now hungry. Rooks, flying higher, were heading for their feeding grounds too. They need soft pasture where they can plunge those great beaks deep into the ground. The croak of raven was tossed on the breeze and the trumpet bray of the cranes echoed across the top of the heavens as they launched themselves from their secret strongholds. 

Ahead of us, along the rhynes, the willows and thorns were full of bright thrushes. The fieldfares, winter visitors from the North, are back! They are beautiful: cinnamon and slate with white underparts. Their chuckling cry is a true herald of autumn.