September has flown by and summer is slipping into Autumn. A music festival in Dorset and then a holiday in Norfolk has left me little time to get out and about locally and of course the penalty for taking time off when you are self-employed is that there is always a mountain of work to catch up with. Things have calmed down now and on Saturday morning I decided to head for the hills and spend a couple of hours at Incombe Hole, a narrow, steep-sided valley just south of Ivinghoe Beacon. The trees and scrub at the bottom of the Hole are excellent for migrant passerines and I was spurred on by the news that a friend had found a Firecrest in the area earlier that morning. It was a windy morning but in the relative calm of the valley it was obvious that there was a lot of activity. Blackcaps gorged themselves on Elderberries and several Chiffchaffs flitted restlessly through the bushes, a large flock of Mistle Thrushes burst angriliy from the trees and a Raven kronked lazily overhead, but there was no sign of the Firecrest. Birding was curtailed for a while, when a noisy group of people climbed down the slope and milled about at the bottom for a while, before realising that they couldn't think of anything to do and then climbed noisily back up again. I occupied myself for a while with the late Summer butterflies that had been encouraged out by the warm weather. Speckled Woods danced in the morning sun, a very faded and ragged Common Blue basked on a patch of bare earth, a few Small Heaths flitted about and this beautiful fresh Brimstone Gonepteryx ramni perched for a while on a Clustered Bellflower Campanula glomerata.
Brimstone Gonepteryx ramni (24/09/2011)
Despite the warm weather the seasons are changing and the signs of Autumn are everywhere. The dry chalky slopes are still studded with Clustered Bellflower, Autumn Gentian and Devilsbit Scabious, but the flowers are slowly fading away. The Whitebeam Trees are laden with bright red berries, the Hawthorn bushes are turning brown and a multitude of Mushrooms are exploding through the soil. This pristine Dung-heaped Ink Cap Coprinelluss cinereus, growing from some Sheep droppings, caught my eye. This common mushroom, also known as Grey Shag has a conical white cap, covered in flaky white scales, that gradually turns a smoky grey as it expands.
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