A Wet Walk around the Horsefield and Deadwood

 A cool grey and breezy day today.  Only 14C with a 17mph wind from the north east increasing later to gusts of 40mph.  Yet another incredibly windy day.  It was wet underfoot and undergrowth everywhere was saturated.  Red Bartsia is now plentiful on the Horsefield and it looks like one of the best years recently for hedgerow fruits.  Blackberries are swollen, ripe and juicy, haws are thick on the hawthorn bushes and the pear tree in the derelict garden of the old Peaks Tunnel Farm is laden with pears; in the spring it was thick with blossom.  Sloes are more plentiful than I have seen.  Blackberries and elderberries have been picked ready for making hedgerow jam, but I am leaving to sloes to ripen and become more sweet before picking for this year's sloe gin.  It is interesting to see that young ash trees are marching out into the Horsefield; soon there will be the beginning of a young ash wood.

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A Very Muddy Plodge on the Beach Looking for Sanderling.

 It was a beautiful day yesterday (unlike today) so I decided to walk out to the tide line from Buck Beck car park to look for small waders, especially sanderling.

Cleethorpes was very busy when I arrived with a real holiday atmosphere, however, I did managed to get parked.  Donning wellies, I headed out across the marsh towards the beach, but not before photographing a common darter in the dunes.  I was amazed at how much the marsh has grown up in the relatively short time since I was here last.  Where last winter it was bare mud with the occasional clump of samphire it is now covered with a rich saltmarsh flora with sea aster about to come into flower to succeed the sea lavender which is now gone over.  As soon as I came out through the dunes onto the beach I could see that the tide was a long way out.  When I got to the old wreck that I enjoy photographing and which  often remains submerged, the tideline was still several hundreds of yards away and some creeks would need to be crossed.  Wary of how quickly the tide can come in I opted to walk along the haven outflow and look for waders there.  There were oystercatcher, redshank and ringed plovers, including juveniles as well as a bar-tailed godwit.  I saw no sign of sanderling, though.  Perhaps they were right on the tideline or maybe it is too early for them yet. I nearly came to grief, however, when I suddenly hit a very soft patch of mud and nearly lost my wellies.  I suddenly became aware of how far out I was and what an expensive mistake it would have been to fall over with a small fortune in camera gear around my neck.  Spurn point and the Humber forts looked spectacular in the bright sunlight and through the lens they looked close enough to touch.

Eventually I made it back safely to hard ground and wandered back through the dunes past the lagoon which often holds little egret; a common gull was the only bird today, though.

It felt like being on holiday on such a warm late summer day with large numbers of people and families enjoying a day at the seaside.  It will only be a few short weeks, however, before it will be cold, bleak and empty down here.  I can't wait.

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Common Darter

                                                    Common Darter

                                                        Black-headed Gull

                                          Ringed Plover and Juvenile

                                                        Ringed Plovers

                                                        Ringed Plovers

                                                            Bar-Tailed Godwit

                                                           Common Gull

                                                        Haile Sand Fort

                                                    Haile Sand Fort

                                                    Haile Sand Fort

Doddington Hall Garden Sculpture Exhibition

 We always enjoy Doddington Hall Gardens, particularly the garden sculpture exhibition.  This year, because of covid, we had to book which we did the day before.  Although very busy it was well-organised even in the coffee and farm shop.

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 A Back End Feel to the Horsefield

This morning was overcast and showery but in the afternoon the weather improved to give some warm sunny intervals, although it was blustery.  There was very little about on the butterfly from, although I did find a couple of common darters in the woodland burial ground.  It feels very backendish now with autumn just around the corner.  It is very defintely the season of autumn fruitfulness with a large crop of haws ripening on the hawthorn bushes, blackberries are swollen, juicy and glistening in the sun and sloes are thick on the blackthorn bushes; more than I can ever remember seeing.  We have already picked crab apples and plums for jamming and picked several pounds of blackberries ready to combine with our windfall Bramleys and elederberries (still ripening) to make hedgerow jam..

Woodland burial ground

• common darter
• peacock
• large white
• speckled wood
• gatekeeper

Horsefield

• large white
• silver y
• gatekeeper
• speckled wood

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Common Darter

Gatekeeper

Brambles

Haws

Sloes

Nettleton Woods

Signs of Autumn in Nettleton Woods