Hawthorn Hill Nature Diary September 21

The swallows gather, flock above the field and go. Summer holds its breath for one more year. The month has been warm. We have fresh grass. The lambing field is almost knee deep in rippling green. We moved the old ewes past lambing to the quarry field for winter. Retirement. It has not been grazed since February. We’ve kept it so as part of a pollinator and wildflower plan. It has had the summer to blossom and bloom, and the ewes will crop the growth so the flowers can break through with ease next spring. We have kept the alder woods free of grazing too, hoping for a flush of wildflowers next spring. The sheep will graze these down too over winter.

The stags are bolder still. They graze in the orchard, the back garden, and in the field beside the house. They coil and rise on their hind legs to pick apples off the trees. Still quick to flight though. You can see the goodness of the summers grazing in the strength of their flanks. Glossy coats and taut muscle, their legs flex and ripple nervously as they graze the back garden, they can still clear a four foot fence with ease and grace, holding their antlers high as they do. They graze, and flinch, and rub the velvet from their horns. Soon they will call, and rut, fight in the long grass and the flag iris. We have found great trampled spaces where they have tangled, heard the thump and crack of tangled antlers, and found and broken antlers up on Hawthorn Hill Field. The sound of the stags roaring and grunting like a call from a distant pagan world.

There’s been a glut of butterflies. The heat of late August after a month of cold and rain brought things into bloom and the butterflies it brought too. The flowering thistle and buddleia thick with tortoiseshell, peacocks and some comma butterflies. Speckled wood and meadow brown rise from the Back Field and from the Quarry Fields. Small whites and others seem to prefer the hedges and the drive. Peacock and tortoiseshell throng the thistle and the buddleia. We watched a dragonfly take a speckled brown on the wing and roost in the rowan top to eat.

The birdsong is quiet. Nothing to fight for. No mate to attract, young to protect, fewer resources to fight for. Cattle bellow urgently, pagan too in their way. The hot weather has brought the mowers and balers for a second cut of silage, and the crows, swallows and starlings pick over the fields when they are done. I wish we had weather and liking for hay. A better thing to take, for the animals and the land they are on.

The buzzard, I think, has been picking roosts by the road in front of the farm. It has been difficult to see. It flies high and into the sun when I pass. There are old beech, ash and sycamore trees. A pair of buzzards often roost on the edge of the woods near here. One flits from roost to roost three trees ahead as I wall the crooked canopy topped road.

The fox cub has been lying with the sheep in the neighbours field. He wakes up, digs for grubs, and naps in amongst the sheep. What business they have will be for next year. For now, neither fears the other. In spring I see the vixen creep into the rush patches in the lamb field. My Shetlands will stand, ad call, and stamp. The goats if they spot here will have no patience with her. The rams too can take offence and see her off. But this small cub seems to be neither care nor threat to my neighbours flock. For the moment, they tolerate each other well enough.

The dog fox, oddly, has little fear of people. I have met him on the road. He is curious of me. Walks near. Sniffs the air. He keeps ten feet between us not needing more. Not wanting less. Lies down in the road curled up to contemplate me. Rises with an unhurried stretch as I walk the road. He prowls the farm at night, comes down Hawthorn Hill hunting grubs and to the drive and across the road, hunting insect nests in the stone walls. The pine marten has a path here too. Comes from the quarry field up through the clearfell and crosses the road further up into the woods. I wonder if they meet. The smooth skinned newt is here too. Basking on the verge. Still. Perfect.

Our own year begins and ends now. We harvest last years lamb, fill the loft and stable with hay, and let the strutting ram to the ewes. The wildflower meadow is still thick with green and growing grass The sheep plucking still ripening blackberries from the bush. We keep our brambles on purpose. They come back into leaf in late January. More than once great armfuls of green bramble have been what saved a sickly ram. They will rouse to wolf bushels of them down where nothing else will move them.

There are rowans and rosehip groaning with fruit. Blackberries too have swollen in the heat and what few apples survived the May frosts have sweetened on the limb. Rowan jam is a thing but seems too much work for the moment. But the rosehip we will make syrup from, leaving much on the bush. Both berries seem to last late into winter and are a useful food for many things. The rowan berries will feed mistle thrushes, fieldfares, redwings too,if they come. The rosehip will too, but its berries will stay sweet to things until late winter. We will plant more of both this year. The blackberries a favourite of the sheep and goats who pick them delicately with their lips before stripping the leaves.

Mid September I hear the tick-tack-thunk of the woodpecker hunting the alder along the drive. There are live and dead trees. A favourite. The woodpecker might be making a cavity for itself to overwinter here. We have found them before, pecked holes high enough in trees, a snug home for a wintering bird. The adult stays, the children leave for new territories. Its a new sound here. Woodpeckers are recent arrivals, or long lost returnees. Autumn, as for owls, is the best time to spot them as the trees become bare. As I walk the drive the woodpecker sets flight across the clearfell. It’s food this winter will shift to a diet of berries, seeds. We will plant more for it. More hawthorn, more rosehip. Plums too. Hazel. Apples for the starlings with some for us too.

In the woods I notice the ash trees. Some with holes in their canopy like a cannon has shot through. Bright clear sky visible through what should still be thick leaf. They look sick. Many never came fully to themselves, looking haggard, too thinly greened. The crowns blackening, bare, dying. I look lower. Diamond shaped scars, The trees sprouting suckers. It is, I think, Ash dieback. And it breaks my heart.

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