All change as seasons shift

SONGBIRDS ARE TAKING EARLIER FLIGHTS BACK TO AFRICA

- Stuart Winter

AUTUMN seems to cast its lengthening shadows on the landscape earlier every year.

Ripened hedgerow fruits have been hanging heavily for weeks and tetchy wasps were on sugar rushes as soon as schools broke up for summer holidays.

Mulling over some of my old notebooks recently revealed how migratory songbirds also appear to be recalibrating their innate timepieces for earlier journeys to African winter quarters.

Back in the mid-1990s, I always pencilled the first week of September for dawn and dusk excursions to catch sight of the warblers, chats and flycatchers passing through my little piece of birding heaven.