15th September from the West Cliff Green, Bournemouth

Even though it is a grey morning, the sky is bright enough to reflect a brilliant silver sheen from the placid sea. The colour has almost completely returned to the Green. By the afternoon the clouds are beginning to clear and the warmth is returning.

Identifying birds by their calls is a great more complicated than the manuals might suggest. Birds have many different calls for different occasions and at different times of the year. In the spring, blackbirds actually compose and rehearse their song, trying short phrases over and over and then trying them in different combinations. Birds will have alarm calls, feeding calls, different calls as juveniles and as adults. There are regional variations and, most confusing of all, many species pick up phrases from other birds to incorporate in the songs or deliberately imitate them. The crow family is particularly good at that. And will often imitate non avian sounds from their environment. Today, a crow perched on a lamp post is proudly making a sound that for all the world sounds like a stick stuck in the spokes of a rapidly spinning bike wheel.

Crow practising strange noises

From 15th September 2011

The palest of blue sky hazing into gold at the edge where the sea rises to meet it. Against this backdrop an intense autumn sunlight creates a stage set with the clifftop bushes and the black silhouette of the twisted pine. Something is about to happen. The flower beds in the Lower gardens are startlingly gorgeous today. Splashes of purple, magenta, orange and yellow against copper foliage. The plants have thrown off their summer formality and restraint and are enjoying the late summer sunshine like a coach party of old ladies showing us their knickers at the seaside.Colin fixed my window last night. Now I can hear the constant, moving susurration that is the sea at the foot of the cliffs. Restful but also a reminder that there is a big world out there.