Look out for the Good Journey Mark – where car-free visitors are welcome and enjoy a discount
What you might see on a Local strollin Autumn
With Covid restrictions continuing, lots of us are walking and cycling in the countryside near home. Here are a few things to look out for this autumn and winter that you can spot almost anywhere: in parks and fields, in woods or by water. The most obvious signs of autumn are colourful leaves, but there are also berries, late flowers, striking seed heads and overwintering birds.
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1. Autumn leaves
This year’s autumn displays are particularly spectacular after a sunny spring and September. Trees respond to shorter days by preparing to survive the winter on stored energy, getting rid of green chlorophyll and turning yellow and orange. Different trees change colour at different times, but there are usually grand displays across the UK, starting earlier in Scotland and the North, until late November.
- Blazing beech trees are some of the most beautiful and areas like the Chiltern hills are cloaked with gold and copper. Tall with smooth-barked trunks, they shed little nuts called beechmast onto park and woodland paths.
- Maple trees (or acers) can turn extraordinary red colours as cold nights and sunny days produce sugars in their leaves. Unlike in North America, where red is major part of the legendary fall colours, British autumns tend to feature more ochres and yellows. The best places to see colourful maples are generally parks and public gardens with ornamental planting. The first UK maples were introduced in the 17th century. If you’re lucky enough to live near Westonbirt or Yorkshire Arboretum, they both have some lovely acers and are both (currently) open during lockdown.
- The leaves on silver birch trees turn gold in autumn providing another magical show, along with pale yellow limes and russet oaks.
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2. Berries
It’s not only leaves that are colourful at this time of years. Look out for orange rowan berries, tiny plum-like sloes, and late-hanging apples that start to look like Christmas baubles on the trees’ bare branches.
- It’s a great year for holly berries, already glowing red among the shiny green leaves. And poisonous spindle berries, which are bright pink and orange – colours it’s hard to believe are natural.
- Scarlet rosehips and crimson hawthorn berries are making a splash in the hedgerows too. Blackberry season may be mostly over, but dark blue sloes are perfect for making purple sloe gin after the first frosts have made their skins permeable.
- Little sour crab apples are falling off the branches already. If you can find enough undamaged ones, they make a great basis for hedgerow jelly, using whatever edible fruits you can find.
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3. Flowers and fungi
Look out too for classic fairy-tale-style white-spotted, red fly agaric or the heart-shaped pink flowers of cyclamen hiding under the trees.
- Foraging for fungi can also provide free food, but you need to know what you are doing as some of them (including the amanita pictured) are deadly. You may prefer simply to admire their interesting shapes and colours in situ, along with autumn mosses and lichens and the last few flowers.
- Michaelmas daisies are named for the feast of St Michael in late September, but their pretty mauve flowers can continue into November, along with other hardy stragglers.
- People on twitter might like to join @wildflowerhour every Sunday 8-9pm, which has just started its seasonal challenge #thewinter10 to find ten wild or naturalised plants in bloom.
4. Seeds and spiders
Once the flowers have mostly gone and the leaves have finally fallen, you can still enjoy the interesting silhouettes of bare trees and the sculptural shapes of dried seed heads, especially decked in dew-covered spiders’ webs.
- The lacy white-flowered cow parsley that lines country paths and lanes in summer forms equally pretty umbels by late autumn. Prickly burdock and teasels, feathery rushes and dried grasses all add interest to the wintry fields.
- The fluffy white seeds of wild clematis, known as old man’s beard, are also easy to recognise.
- Spiders’ webs show up most clearly on foggy or frosty days. It’s mating season for house spiders and they do like – as the name suggests – to share human homes so sometimes you don’t even need to step outside for a wildlife encounter (Not so great for arachnophobes).
5. Birds
October saw the usual influx of migrant birds arriving for the winter. The fruitful hedges and garden trees mean a feast for birds like newly-arrived fieldfares and redwings.
- Fieldfares, large thrushes with grey heads and pale speckled bellies, make a noise like a football rattle; you can spot big flocks of them in late autumn and winter.
- Walking near watery areas, look out for swans, ducks, geese and wading birds. Some of the usual residents, including herons, egrets, mallards and moorhens, live here all year round with others arriving to join them. You may think winter in the UK is chilly, but birds like pink-footed geese, arriving from Greenland and Iceland, head to Scotland for a bit of winter sun and move southwards as the days get shorter.
- Waxwings are one of the most colourful and unpredictable winter visitors. With a crest, flashes of orange and a yellow-tipped tail, they can arrive from Russia and Scandinavia, sometimes in large numbers and suddenly descend on the berries in suburban carparks.
- Perhaps the most mesmerising seasonal spectacles are starling murmurations. They often begin in November and can last through to early spring. No one knows exactly why thousands of starlings form huge whirling clouds on winter evenings, but it’s wonderfully hypnotic to watch. Finding safety in numbers (sometimes as many as 100,000), they generally perform their huge aerial dance at dusk as they gather over their roosting sites before they sleep. They’re often seen over the piers in Brighton (west pier) and Eastbourne, in the reedbeds at Fen Drayton near Cambridge and numerous other places around the UK. You can track and record the latest local sightings at Starlings in the UK.
- These ornithological delights will still be there when the lockdown lifts. Unless they happen to be very close, it’s probably best to enjoy the everyday birds in parks and gardens nearby. There’s always something cheering about a little red-breasted robin, perched on a branch like a Christmas card come to life.
Wherever you are, stay safe and enjoy the world around you. Happy walking!
