Summer has ended rather abruptly.
In the space of only a week we have gone from warm, walking in t-shirt, weather to woolly jumpers and boots.
The swiftness of the seasons had me thinking that it won’t be long before we hear the curlews again, although they nest on the moors they don’t hang about here in the winter. I’ve noticed the passing of the migratory birds more on this northern hill than I did living in the Thames Valley. Probably because of the lower number of garden birds, we don’t get long tailed tits and wagtails in the quantities that we did down south.
That’s not to say we have a lack of feathered friends. We have owls in the garden…. owls! Barn and Tawny. We are a little spoilt for owls – although at 4am in late summer I don’t feel spoilt by Tawny Owls…. Twit-a-wooing like there’s no tomorrow.
And we are throughly spoilt for Corvids…Ravens and Rooks but it’s Jackdaws that make up the majority. Opposite our house is a row of trees packed full of Jackdaws. They shout and charge around like wayward teenagers – tumbling out of the sky, before being scooped back up by the wind. They’re challenging to photograph in that they don’t like to keep still and they’re black, meaning that 99% of my jackdaw pictures resemble blobs or ink smudges. Waiting for the right light… the right turn… And then a chap like the one shown here turns up, rests for a moment, cocks his head, dares me to take his picture. Why can’t they all be like him?
