NATURE Winged creatures’ September habits

On the September wing


Country Sights and Sounds
John Shelley

The woods were strangely quiet. ‘Where have all the birds gone?’ asked a friend.
The answer is that they are lying low in the bushes, changing their feathers, or moulting. This is an annual occurrence that takes place in the weeks around late summer and early autumn, one which deprives the birds of much of their power of flight.
Over the year, their plumage has become tired and worn, despite the endless hours of washing, oiling and pruning undertaken. New kit is needed for the colder weeks that are to come, and there is no better time than now to make the change, while there remains dense cover in the hedgerows and plenty of easy-to-access food in the form of insects and seeds.
It’s not that there are no birds anyway. Out on the lake swallows are gathering into thick roosting flocks. Could I put an estimate on their numbers? I hesitate to do so, for wherever I turn there are hundreds before, and when I look back there are hundreds more behind. Besides, they begin to arrive shortly before dusk, when it is already difficult to see properly.
Dusk is early now, too early, stirring contention within the breast. A part feels forlorn, as if summer is lost and opportunity fled. Another finds comfort in the gentle dark and art in the way that hills melt and fuse with the sky in the fading light. Even the splashing of homeward-bound oars has changed. On those long evenings we enjoyed in July the sound had been joyful and languid, as if the water itself were thickened with summer delight; now the same is thinner, hurried and eager; wetter, if such a thing was possible.
There are still heavy hatches of insects in sheltered corners that entice the swallows to feed hard before retiring for the night. These like to gather in clouds above the highest point, generally over small clumps of bulrushes that sprout from shallow bays, where they engage in their pre-nuptial courtship flight. (It is a strange notion that amid that dense, swirling mass, two insects will find each other.)
Ordinarily, the bulrushes remain the highest point on their horizon. Then I arrive and, standing in the boat, become the uppermost and most desired piece of real estate in town. The caddis flies, I note, as the swarms converge upon me, are the dominant species on the wing; cinnamon sedge and silverhorn, I believe, although I am no entomologist.
Now I find myself in something of a quandary. The swallows want the flies and I want to see the swallows, but the swallows are certainly not impressed to see me in such close proximity to their supper. I put my hat on and this somehow gives the birds more confidence. They swoop to snatch insects from above my head, but I cannot see them past the hat’s brim. I take off the hat and they retreat. They are still spectacular.
There are martins and swallows feeding together until just before dark, at which time they settle into the rushes. I can see how the first to perch have difficulty grasping the upright stem. Another comes to lend a hand, and then a third adds its own body weight, so that the thick rush bends to become almost horizontal. Other birds spy this more comfortable roost and clamour for a place. Suddenly there are too many and the stem sags. It is vacated with a flurry of wings; released from its burden it springs upright once more. Swallows and martins swirl and chatter and start again. They will settle eventually, as they do each evening.
The night is quiet, the shadows deep. Alone in the boat I am surrounded by dark shapes; wooded islands, dense reed beds, and the hill that leads to home, with those familiar houselights that act as a beacon to starboard. I put the oars down to sit and listen. At first there is nothing to hear. A light and mirthful quacking carries to my ear as a family of ducks pass ahead, one adult with half a dozen half-grown young ones in single file. Are there more this year? I think there might be.
As I pull the boat up bats welcome me ashore as they hunt along the tree line, helping themselves to more of those same hapless flies. It is a fine place, this earth, so full of life.