No frost today and, unusually, no blackbirds foraged under the apple tree this morning. Just the bobbing motion of a robin searching for invertebrates amongst the pecked-out apples and crinkled brown leaves.
Birds in pairs as I left the village, on the longer route, offering time for reflection. Pigeons first, then magpies. Houses gave way to lawn and ponies in small groups; no more cars and then, just before the second bridge, a grey heron close to the road in the bog.
The bracken has all turned. Every shade of fudge from plain to deepest chocolate.
Recent rain has stuck the autumnal litter to the road and its pattern reflects the sequence of trees: beech, birch, oak, a corner broadly strewn with discarded maple, the dust of needles and clusters of pine cones. Smaller brown birds are swept up before the car, chaffinches, but also gold finches and later, pipits.
I found the missing blackbirds and almost killed one. A heart wrenching moment when a bird disappeared below the line of the front of the car. I watched the mirror, expecting disaster, but this bird must have landed and gone underneath, because in the rear-view I saw it fly back up, apparently hale.
Autumn pigs; the usual herd of cows. From the plain the sky showed baby-blue North in ragged cloud and the Southern horizon was painted in a rough, narrow ribbon with layers of paler cloud hanging over a crack of sunlight just above the distant trees.
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