On 1st September, little is more likely to cause a social media pile-on than excitedly proclaiming ‘Yay! It’s the first day of autumn! Goodbye summer!!’
Cue legions of annoyed folk ranting and arguing about equinox, equilux, harvest moons and goodness knows what else.
Weather bods like to compartmentalise the seasons into three-month batches. Meteorological autumn is therefore September, October and November, and 1st September is its first day.
It’s nice and orderly, happens the same time every year, and given that the meteorological autumn offers me the earliest opportunity to put summer to bed and confidently embrace the prospect of cooler months to come, it certainly has some appeal. In reality though, I dance to nature’s tune. As do we all, whether we realise it or not.
Seasonal change isn’t something that happens at midnight on some arbitrary day. A season isn’t a fixed state of being. A season is a process, constantly evolving via a sequence of natural events, and many of us are therefore on the lookout for familiar signs and cues that herald autumn’s slow but steady arrival. This is ‘phenology’, the study of seasonal changes in the natural world, and as we move into October, my checklist of autumn signs is already filling up nicely.
At Mar Lodge, the earliest autumn sign was the waning of the heather in August. This year the summer purple was especially vivid and, given its radiance, it was especially noticeable when it started to fade to rich, rusty brown.
In amongst the heather, also in August, were the ‘traffic light’ rowan saplings. Rarely more than 1 or 2ft high, these wee trees have green, yellow and red leaves, all on one plant. They’re conspicuous, eye-catching adverts for the coming change, displaying a flourish of colour you don’t otherwise see until much later in the season.
By early September, the birch was showing signs of turning. Not a uniform change of colour, rather the appearance of drip-like yellow streaks within the green, as though a small amount of bright paint had been spilled. These were, however, just early-autumn primers. Full landscape-scale change of palette is still some way off.
Another early autumn cue for me was that first bright autumn morning with objects starkly lit from the side, by a golden glow from a low sun. Well, provided it’s not a drizzly, cloudy mess outside!
The sun rises late, around 7am, and it rises more slowly than in summer, casting its rays through more of the atmosphere than if it were directly overhead. This scatters more of the light and creates richer colours.
Nights are also longer by now, and the nocturnal cooling on those first clear, calm nights in late August or early September makes it more likely that the air near the surface will reach the dew point i.e. the point at which air becomes saturated with water vapour and condensation occurs. Cue those chilly mornings when mist hugs the landscape, or hangs low over the fields.
Around mid-September we had our first proper run of mornings like that, and I think of all the autumn cues, this might be my favourite. It’s hard to tear myself away, because as the mist moves like liquid, the light is constantly changing. I’m likely to be late for work on days like that!
That misty, seasonal dampness also gave rise to one of the most spectacular, if ghostly autumnal cues, when every spider web in the landscape was rendered as an exquisite, wet, sparkling work of art.
These ‘sheet webs’ are the work of money spiders, who hang upside down on the web undersides, waiting for unsuspecting prey. In heather or long grass, where the webs are so numerous they form a blanket, the effect is incredible. You cannot move for stepping through one.
There’s nothing gradual about the reveal either. One morning they’re completely absent, the next it looks like an invasion. Spiders are there all the time of course, but the visual impact is amplified by their sheer profusion, and the fact that they are very active this time of year, looking for mates.
For some people, it will be rather unsettling to discover just how dominant the spiders are in the places we like to roam. Doubtless many people would rather remain in ignorance, or stay indoors. But at this time of year, staying indoors won’t necessarily help, for spiders are on the move there too.
This is peak spider time, when males roam around, looking for mates and seeking refuge in warm buildings. It happens every year, but gawd, this autumn there seem to be LOADS of spiders in my home!
Behind the toilet, above the shower, dangling from the mirror, in the bath and the sinks. Behind the fridge, on the shelves, in ceiling corners, they’re pretty much everywhere.
They don’t freak me out though, because close inspection of any of their webs reveals a veil of black specks. Dead midges. Yep, those spiders are free pest control! And my goodness, have the midges been pests this summer!
It’s been the worst summer for midges I can remember. But one of the things that finally puts an end to their tyranny is the onset of cooler weather, and those first frosts.
We’ve had a few frosts now at Mar Lodge Estate, thank goodness! We had our first air frost (below 0C) on 31st August, at -0.1C.
One frost isn’t enough, however, so this year the midges remained at plague levels well into mid-September. To my mind, autumn can’t really think of arriving until the midges are completely away, and thankfully the longer nights and colder weather have finally done for the bulk of the midges. There were still a few biting in Glen Derry the last weekend in September, but nowhere near as bad as they were earlier in the month.
Course, what’s bad for one thing, is good for another. The longer nights kick-off the most evocative and cherished of autumn events in Scotland. The red deer rut.
Triggered by a decrease in light levels, the stags undergo physical transformation – their bodies flood with testosterone, they grow a shaggy mane, and their necks get much thicker. They roar to assert their mating rights over the hinds on their patch, and to ward off competition from would-be challengers. It’s a proper ‘big beast’ sound, and for many this is the very sound of autumn in Scotland.
This autumn, I heard my first roaring stag on 21st September. And since then, the glen upstream of Braemar has been a battleground of sound. I’ve never been sure whether cold frosty weather pours jet fuel on the rut, but certainly on a recent, bright -3C morning, the stags were going nuts.
I’ve watched the dominant stag being run ragged as he attempts to herd the females in his ‘harem’. He never stops patrolling, and barely has a moment to eat or rest. I like to open the Velux window in the roof to get a grandstand view of his antics, but in so doing, I inadvertently encounter one of the stranger and, frankly, more bizarre autumn signs in the process – a sleepy, black, buzzing confetti that falls to the ground when I open the window.
Flies, driven by the cold into the cracks around the window, there to wait out the winter. They weren’t there last week, but after the -3C morning there are now always at least 20 hiding there.
Sluggish and ill-prepared for flight, they’re probably more surprised than I am when the window opens. Some fall to the floor, others drunkenly zig zag to the nearest surface. But from now on there will be flies headbutting lightbulbs and ricocheting off walls. All I’ll say is, thank goodness for my resident autumn spiders!
It’s as visceral sign as you could want, that many a creature is starting to slumber, while others are having a burst of activity before the end of their short lives. I’ve noticed there are lots of dragonflies on the wing just now, mating before they die. But I’ve also noticed there are no wasps.
Come September, when wasp colonies are dying and the workers are hungry for sugar, we should be pestered by wasps incessantly. But no. I haven’t been pestered by a single wasp this autumn. In fact, I’ve only seen one wasp all year, and that was in Surrey!
I’ve found plenty of table tennis ball-sized spheres in the heather – the early, paper-thin scaffolding of wasp nests – begun but never finished. But no wasps. Victims, no doubt, of the cool wet summer. Very worrying, frankly.
But while some insects are checking-out, others are poised to peak. Yes folks, it’s that time of year when, long after you’ve returned to your car or your home after a walk outside, you feel a wriggling on your neck, or in your beard, or somewhere else disconcerting. You blindly flick whatever it is away, only to feel it more keenly a minute later.
Keds. Every non-winter month has its specialist winged annoyance, and no sooner have the midges been reduced, the keds are raining from the sky.
With their ice-axe-like feet, they’re impossible to swipe away. To remove them you must instead pinch them between finger and thumb, all the while feeling their unsettlingly muscular thighs wriggling between your digits. Eurgh! They’ll be with us for another month or so I’m afraid.
On a less icky note, birdlife is, for many people, the defining autumnal cue. And one such cue for me is the reappearance of robins. Weirdly, it’s only when I see one that it occurs to me they’ve been absent for ages.
They’ve been incognito all summer, raising broods, but come autumn they start reestablishing their territories. They do this by occupying prominent perches and singing their hearts out – something that most songbirds aren’t doing this time of year.
Their timing is impeccable. In Fife, I’ve almost always seen my first robin of the autumn during that first week of September. And in several years, on 1st September itself. True to form, robins reappeared in the Linn of Dee car park that first week of September, perched on the ticket machines.
But, like the change of seasons itself, bird migration doesn’t happen all at once either – it’s staggered over weeks and months. Swallows, the subject of my last article, have long gone from outside my house, but I saw some in Glenlivet last week, and Glen Geldie on 1st October.
On 12th September I was in the car park, filling potholes on a cold day, when I heard that first, lovely ‘wink wink’ of pink-footed geese. I looked up, and saw my first ‘V’ formation of the autumn.
I think I was unconsciously listening out for them that day. The wind had veered northerly, and I could sense their arrival in the air. There’s something about feeling cold and being outdoors in a certain light, that compels me to look up in search of geese. As I say, we all dance to nature’s tune.
That cold mid-September Arctic blast didn’t only bring geese and other migrants down from the north. It also brought snow to the Cairngorms, to about 800m.
Snow isn’t a common autumn feature across lowland Scotland, but certainly in the Cairngorms it’s something I’m eagerly watching out for, and something I will walk some distance just to set eyes upon.
‘Green’ season is very short in the high Cairngorms. Not even two months. And if you don’t consciously take time to notice it, it’s gone in the blink of an eye.
Deergrass leads the charge. Confusingly a sedge rather than a grass, it forms those dense anemone-like tussocks across the high plateaux. As early as mid-August it is already turning rusty brown, and is a favourite foreground composition for many a photo on early autumn hillwalks.
The slow draining of green from the landscape, and its replacement by exquisite palettes of warm browns, reds and yellows, is of course the visual highlight of autumn.
In trees and shrubs, the reduction in light levels causes chlorophyll production to cease. Chlorophyll is the green pigment that gives vegetation its characteristic colour, and once it starts to break down, other pigments (always present but largely suppressed by the greens) come to the fore.
The richness and dominance of the autumn colours depends not only on the weather at the time, but also on the weather in the months beforehand. The amount of sunlight and rain, and the frequency and duration of cold spells will all determine how vibrant the autumn colours will be. Although, this can all be irrelevant if early storminess strips the trees of their leaves before they reach ‘peak autumn’.
Generally, the whole process, from green to brown to dropping, from start to finish takes the entire season and will run well into November. This is because different tree species ‘go’ at different times.
Mid-October is usually good for a Scottish holiday to see the best of the colour, but I always go away to the west coast in late October/early November, as that’s the best time to see the Atlantic oakwoods. Oak being one of the last trees to turn.
Currently, the birch here on Deeside are no longer green but they’re still also nowhere close to golden brown either. In another couple of weeks though, the birch should be at their peak.
Just in the last week or so, much of the brown in the pine woodlands is coming from the scots pines themselves. This might seem odd, given it is a conifer, but scots pines do shed old needles every few years. Many are doing it now, and this is giving a distinctly autumnal hue to the pinewoods.
However, the best colour just now is, without question, coming from the rowans. Not their leaves, but their berries. Bright red, like lights on a Christmas tree. Not only are they bright, they’re also numerous and plentiful. So much so, that some trees and branches are buckling under the weight.
I’ve noticed it elsewhere on Deeside, and have pondered outwardly on social media whether others around the country have noticed the same? The vast majority of respondents concur that this is a great year for rowan berries.
Rowan seed production varies enormously from year to year, and it’s normal to get a glut every few years. These are called mast years, and while it might be tempting to immediately attribute this year’s glut to grey and damp summer weather, after doing some digging online it’s clear that the reasons behind mast years are probably more complicated.
Through digging, I was unwittingly introduced to ‘predator satiation theory’. This being, that having too many creatures eating your berries will mean all seeds are lost. So, the tree produces a glut every few years to overwhelm its predators with more food than they can consume. Conversely, during the intervening leaner years, the trees starve the predators of a food source, potentially keeping them in check. Seed germination after these mast years can apparently be 40 times higher than after a low production year, and theories abound as to what stimulates the mast.
Some studies suggest that a drought in one year is followed by a glut the next. Others reckon it is caused by the previous two years exhibiting a warming trend. That it’s due to pollen exchange occurring at a local level. Or that it’s coordinated by trees communicating via mycelium networks. Whatever the reason, studies in Norway found rowans masted every two to three years and did so across whole geographical areas, but also found that populations that had more irregular cycles had better success at seed germination. Clearly, this requires a whole article dedicated to the wonderful rowan, but that’s for another time!
Sadly though, this year’s glut is very unlikely to be a prediction of a harsh winter to come, for the simple reason that nature reacts to what has happened and is happening. It doesn’t act in anticipation of what hasn’t yet happened or might happen.
Don’t get me wrong, as Winter Fan Extraordinaire I am first in the queue for any signs of a harsh winter to come. As Spooky Mulder’s poster used to say in the X Files, “I want to believe!”
Looking back online, the years I noticed local rowan masts in Fife were 2020, 2016 and 2013. Winter 20/21 was notably snowy, 16/17 was notably warm, and 13/14 was notably snowless. So, make of that what you will.
Beyond this point, deeper into October, I’ll be on the lookout for more winged migrants arriving. Fieldfares, for example, who are clearly in for a treat this year when they see our rowan berries! One wonders whether they’ll be able to fly north at the end of winter? Will they fill themselves to the point of not being able to take off?
I’ll also be on the lookout for fungi. Already conspicuous on Deeside, but I’d expect them to become more so. Plus, I’m excited to hear the Tawny owls dispersing in October, and calling out from the dark recesses of our woodlands.
But more generally, I guess I’m watching for us to move from a state of stability to one of volatility. As the nights get longer in the northern hemisphere, the difference in temperatures between the pole and the tropics increases, which powers the jetstream and turbo-charges the gales and storms.
Course, these are all just the things that make it onto my own autumn checklist. Doubtless everyone else has their own, tailored to where they live and what they do. But one thing’s for sure, wherever you are, autumn is never dull.
Erm…except when it’s cloudy….in which case it can be very dull indeed.