Autumnal

There are signs... amongst the day-to-day happenings, there are definitely signs.

In Orkney, Autumn is not so much a season, it's the dawning realisation that birds you have been listening to or watching for several months are no longer there. Then, no sooner than that thought has flickered across your mind, the empty skies, fields and bays are filled with different species, a new palette of colours, sights and sounds.

And, if you're a leaf, Autumn lasts about 24 hours. Plants don't tend to be sentimental, they can't afford to be. For them, Summer to Winter is like a switch being thrown.

This week, many flocks of Pink-footed Geese winged their way south through the scudding Orcadian sky. Energetic V's of "Wink, wink" sounds battling the gusting breeze as they headed for estuaries far from the Arctic Circle.

I saw my first Whooper Swans of the Winter, a group of a dozen, counter-intuitively flying north, but I think they were headed for St Peter's Pool in Deerness.

A walk in Orphir offered up some watery sunlight glinting off the surface of the sea...

whilst another surface revealed an epic battle between opposing forces...

 

as two species of lichen fought over a rock.

On a Ragwort stem shorn of leaves, a Ruby Tiger caterpillar considered its options...

and a small flock of Red-breasted Mergansers chose a sheltered bay to preen and contemplate the late afternoon sunshine.

Still in Orphir, on another day and a different bay, even seaweed was feeling the autumnal vibe. It was tempting to imagine these tiny bladders as leaves changing colour.

 

Meantime, with the incoming tide, a Hermit Crab was strobed by the lightning reflections of sunlight on the water's surface...

before it hurriedly sought a calmer place to be.

As Scapa Flow slowly reclaims the sandy bay for a few hours, blue and brown hues predominate, whilst small wading birds patrol the water's edge for food.

A little further inland, behind an ayre, freshwater shallows reflect the colour of the sky, as distant transmitting towers dispassionately broadcast the news of the day.

On the seaward side of the ayre, the tide rewrites the lines it penned only a short while ago, a thought too close for comfort in these strange times of political untruth, obfuscation and greed.