November

 

Autumn colours change to their winter hues, the trees dark against the the grey-blue hills and misty skies.

November weather brings visiting birds, the winter migrants - fieldfare, redwing, lapwing and golden plover.

We see more birds visiting the garden for food, all the regular garden birds and also others such as yellow hammer and siskin.

 

 

Fieldfare are large thrushes, we look out for them as the weather turns colder, making their way along the hedgerows and trees looking for berries, and on the ground in the grass and arable fields where they feed on worms and insects. Fieldfare are of high conservation priority, and are on the Birds of Conservation Concern (BoCC) red listing See the RSPB website for more information.

 

Streams tumbling off the moorland into the River Lynher are swelling the water levels; fields become saturated and rainwater quickly finds its way down to the low pasture and eventually into the rivers.

 

As dawn was breaking a young fox calmly trotting across the garden, stopping to look towards me twice before disappearing into the shrubs.

 

 

On an old tree stump in the garden I found these Ink cap fungi, Coprinellus truncorum. They often appear rising in tiers up the side of a damp Cornish hedge or fallen tree. All the ink-caps have the peculiarity that as they age they deliquesce into a drippy black fluid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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