The long goodbye
19 September was the last day of… not exactly summer, but the transitional period between summer and autumn. I knew we were unlikely to get any more of mostly summer weather, so I celebrated it by wearing a summer dress I had managed to put on only a couple of times this year. It was the last of those almost summer-hot, but somehow distinctly autumnal afternoons, and the gathering clouds were leaving no doubt that it would be the last.
And ouch, the house martins were suddenly gone - well, most of them. I saw one from a distance (I was so happy to see its white rump), and I guess its mate was still around, but I didn’t get to see it. I can only hope that they went to some out-f-town “training camp” instead of rushing those youngsters that had barely learned to fly straight to Africa. The bats were going out early (compared to the summer), and the swifts were much quieter than usual in the increasingly overcast sky.
I got to see a pair of house martins in a different place on the next day, the only ones in a sky still full of swifts; they even visited their nest so often that I wondered if their young were still inside. Then I almost saw them the next two early evenings (it was impossible to distinguish them from the swifts at such a height) and only heard their tantalizing voices - and then I never saw them or heard them again.
It felt strange to see the bats fly out in broad daylight as the late afternoons became bearable for them.
In the middle of all this, the ice-cream stands disappeared from the streets in the town centre, and I didn’t notice when exactly it happened.
Then we got five more unexpectedly warm days in late September and early October, and I took out my summer tops and even my summer jeans and my sandals again, but I wouldn’t be bold enough to sport a skirt.
And then we got back into what looked like a gradual transition into autumn - until the weather suddenly got early-winter-cold and stayed that way, in varying degrees. The swifts were unperturbed, and many of the trees stayed green until mid-October - and then some of them started very rapidly turning yellow or red and shedding their leaves in the next blast of wind while others are still taking it slowly; I still see silver lindens in varying stages all around.
Amazingly, the swifts are still here, although I don’t see anything close to a mass evening flight even on sunny days, and they’ve long stopped flying as low as they did in summer. I wonder if there are more flying insects left for them to hunt higher in the air. The weather forecast promises gradual warming up near the end of this week, the kind of weather we should have had in October. I appreciate that, but I know that the swifts will very soon be gone, and I’m going to miss them until their return next spring.
And now two little stories in photos:
1 October: an optimistic rosebud
3 October: the same bud in full bloom (with a bonus view of my hand holding it steady in the wind)
26 October: another optimistic rosebud on the same plant (and I never remembered to check what became of it, but it's clearly a plant with tough flowers)
3 October: a flowering plant (two of them, actually still going strong: I can't remember when they went into bloom):
26 October: two of the last four flowers on that plant.
27 October: The last petals on the last flower still surviving in the wind; they wer gone the next day.
And ouch, the house martins were suddenly gone - well, most of them. I saw one from a distance (I was so happy to see its white rump), and I guess its mate was still around, but I didn’t get to see it. I can only hope that they went to some out-f-town “training camp” instead of rushing those youngsters that had barely learned to fly straight to Africa. The bats were going out early (compared to the summer), and the swifts were much quieter than usual in the increasingly overcast sky.
I got to see a pair of house martins in a different place on the next day, the only ones in a sky still full of swifts; they even visited their nest so often that I wondered if their young were still inside. Then I almost saw them the next two early evenings (it was impossible to distinguish them from the swifts at such a height) and only heard their tantalizing voices - and then I never saw them or heard them again.
It felt strange to see the bats fly out in broad daylight as the late afternoons became bearable for them.
In the middle of all this, the ice-cream stands disappeared from the streets in the town centre, and I didn’t notice when exactly it happened.
Then we got five more unexpectedly warm days in late September and early October, and I took out my summer tops and even my summer jeans and my sandals again, but I wouldn’t be bold enough to sport a skirt.
And then we got back into what looked like a gradual transition into autumn - until the weather suddenly got early-winter-cold and stayed that way, in varying degrees. The swifts were unperturbed, and many of the trees stayed green until mid-October - and then some of them started very rapidly turning yellow or red and shedding their leaves in the next blast of wind while others are still taking it slowly; I still see silver lindens in varying stages all around.
Amazingly, the swifts are still here, although I don’t see anything close to a mass evening flight even on sunny days, and they’ve long stopped flying as low as they did in summer. I wonder if there are more flying insects left for them to hunt higher in the air. The weather forecast promises gradual warming up near the end of this week, the kind of weather we should have had in October. I appreciate that, but I know that the swifts will very soon be gone, and I’m going to miss them until their return next spring.
And now two little stories in photos:
1 October: an optimistic rosebud
3 October: the same bud in full bloom (with a bonus view of my hand holding it steady in the wind)
26 October: another optimistic rosebud on the same plant (and I never remembered to check what became of it, but it's clearly a plant with tough flowers)
3 October: a flowering plant (two of them, actually still going strong: I can't remember when they went into bloom):
26 October: two of the last four flowers on that plant.
27 October: The last petals on the last flower still surviving in the wind; they wer gone the next day.
