Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

There’s no denying the change to autumn, it’s all around is now – the Christmas decorations will be out before you know it.  It’s a lovely time, the days are still warm but the nights are cooler, the hedgerows are full of goodies for birds and animals to fatten up before the winter comes.

September is the time when bird migration is at its peak and millions of tiny beings move thousands of miles to enjoy weather warmer than the UK winter.  For our residents, and visitors from the north, this is a time to eat as much of nature’s bounty as possible to see them through the lean months, especially in January and February.

Keats, in 1820, was correct to write of “a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”.  Trees groan with apples and pears, hedgerows are full of hawthorn, sloes and blackberries whilst some moors, mainly in the Pennines, the delicious bilberry is ripe – it just takes hours to pick enough for a pie!

Autumn mist, technically called ‘radiation fog’, which forms during clear, still nights when the ground loses heat via radiation. The ground cools the adjacent air to saturation point, resulting in the formation of mist.  It’s common on the edges of the moor as the valleys create the ideal conditions for the mist to form.

It reminds of the time a few years ago when my mate Tommi, who runs a local taxi business (some people call him Tommi the Taxi, not sure why) was booked to pick up a Big Shot flying into Bodmin airfield by helicopter.  Bodmin airfield is a small place with two grass strips used mainly by pleasure planes.  The Big Shot was arriving from Up North by helicopter, Tommi was to pick him up and take him round his business interests and take him back.  It was a misty, autumn morning and Tommi was in position awaiting the chopper’s arrival, resplendent in his best T shirt and fairly clean jeans.  He wasn’t sure if the chopper could land due to the mist, but he waited for a while, enjoying listening to the great Sir Terry on Radio 2.  After a while, he could hear the “woppa- woppa” of the approaching machine and he watched it circle the airfield a couple of times, checking out the landing options, Tommi assumed.  It duly landed and Tommi was soon off with the Big Shot.

Later, Tommi had a chance to chat to the pilot and he said he wasn’t sure if he could land and noticed he gone around a couple of times.  The pilot said, “No, this plane has every modern gizmo on board, I could land it in a coal mine.  However, when I called the Tower for permission to land, the reply was “can you go around a couple of times, we’re just feeding the cat””.  Probably added a couple of hundred quid to the fuel bill.

That morning, the boys, Napoleon and Roy, were eager to be on the moor, mist or no mist.  In the Land Rover, Roy either snuggles up next to me on the centre seat or lies across my lap with his head out of the window, if it’s warm.  Napoleon, however, occupies most of the rest of the cab and insists on the window being open so he can stick his head out, come rain or shine.  He’s getting clever too, as he realises in the narrow lanes on the moor, we often have to squeeze past other cars and getting a whack from a bramble thorn on the hooter is no joke – so he pulls his head inside if we get close to the foliage.

The moor feels like it’s in limbo at present, the summer breeding birds have mostly left, although swallows and martins will be passing through for a little while yet, and the winter visitors are not here.  Stonechats will probably over-winter but its not also so clear, some birds may move off to Spain but be replaced by other newcomers.  However, the birds that bred on the rough ground at Stannon appear to have gone. Skylarks will be here all winter, though, they love the tussock grass of Bodmin Moor, although some birds will move to lower ground and flock together if the weather is bad.

The Skylark is an amazing bird, it’s best known for its spring time song.  It rises vertically from the ground, trilling its lovely liquid warble, rising high in the sky until it’s barely visible although the song can still be heard, before it performs a parachute flight back to the ground.  It’s an incredible feat – try running up a long flight of stairs whistling loudly.

The autumns sees the stags on Bodmin rutting.  Red and Roe deer are our most common species and the rut, when males fight over their territory, is spectacular and if you are lucky enough to see it, it’s quite unforgettable.  The call of the stag is also a fantastic noise and sight and it characterises this change of the seasons.

Last night, I risked a few jars in the New Inn, or more correctly outside as social distancing dictated it – even though the clear skies mean cold nights – and the night sky is spectacular over Bodmin.  

A Bellowing Red Deer Stag

The village has pretty limited street lights, although the decorative lights on the pub mean it can be seen from space,  but it’s sobering (ha ha) to note that it’s reckoned we can see over 9000 stars with the naked eye – well, we could if we could see the whole sky so we might see 4000, or so, if light pollution allows.  It’s still a lot but some bright chap with a good calculator has said there may be 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, which is the galaxy we call home, and there could be two trillion galaxies in the universe.  Blimey, this calls for another pint of Cornwall’s finest ale.   I can’t quite work out why so many chocolate bars are named after the space features – Milky Way, Galaxy, Mars.  I’m surprised there’s no Moon Bar, although it sounds a good name for a pub.

Anyway, I was blessed to be in the company of Bryan, who is Cornwall’s Premier Molecatcher, and Bugs, a local farmer who, like many people in Cornwall, has other jobs, including the art of lime plastering and building the stone Cornish hedges, which form field boundaries.   A Cornish hedge is really two drystone walls in parallel, about 1m apart, with soil in-filling the gap, and planted with grass or bushes.  They are very environmentally friendly, support lots of wildlife and date back to over 4000 years ago - and Bugs is a real expert in building them.  It was a pleasure to have a pint or several with him and talk about the current demand for hedges, which is very high.  Similarly, Bryan is busy in-between farming activities, this is the main time when people complain about moles and their lawns.  

A New Cornish Hedge

The mole is an amazing animal, small and stocky with soft fur that was used to make moleskin trousers and waistcoats in years gone by.  They have huge shovel like front paws, with two thumbs, to shift the earth as they dig their tunnels.  

The mole runs – and the hills they push up that mean some people view them as pests – act as traps for earthworms, the main diet.  Mole saliva has a toxin in it that stuns the worms and allows the mole to store them in larders which is a fact that is probably more fascinating to biologists than to the average earthworm.  Bryan is adamant that he can tell if it’s a male or female by looking at the molehills – something about males go in a straight line, females are more erratic.  As Geraldine checks this out before it’s published,I’m saying nothing