First Signs of Autumn

The recent sunshine, and temperatures soaring into the low twenties, may give us the feel that it is still high summer, but there are plenty of signs in the fields and hedgerows that Autumn is closing in on us.

The rowan trees are laden with berries.  This is in stark contrast to last Autumn, when there were hardly any.  The variation must be related to the weather in the earlier part of the year, particularly May.  This year, when the rowans were in flower, we were enjoying temperatures which soared into the thirties.  Last year, a May gale stripped them of their flowers and, in some cases, most of their leaves.

This rowan stands on Port Beg croft, on top of a low cliff overlooking the Sound of Mull.  It's a lonely, exposed position, and the tree is battered and bent by the wind, so it has featured in several Diary photos.  For the first time it has berries, though you have to look hard to find them.

The hawthorns too have a heavy crop of berries.  If, as folk-lore suggests, this is a sign of a hard winter to come, then perhaps we can look forward to seeing a few waxwings again, as this seems to be one of their favourite foods.

Not to be outdone, the brambles are coming into fruit, and it looks like a good year for them too.  Before we came to Kilchoan we used to brew our own wine, using anything from wheat and bananas to rhubarb, but the best and most reliable wine was always blackberry.  There's no shortage of brambles here in Ormsaigbeg - they tend to occupy land once used for growing crops.

Every year The Diary publishers a similar picture to this one, of the swallows congregating on the telegraph wires preparing for their 6,000-mile migration to Africa.  The only difference this year is that some of the swallows seem to have left already: either they had such a good year that they felt they could leave early, or the fine weather kept down the usual swarms of insects upon which they feed.  Certainly, the warm weather has meant that this has, from a human viewpoint, been a good year for midges - in that there have been relatively few of them.