September’s here with an irresistible start to the end of summer, blistering sunshine, arrives in a hail of fiery photons.

The serene, breezeless and pin sharp clarity of mid day means we’re in for a reptilian ‘roll over’ down at preserve or reserves in the verdant glory of the still new and awakening millennium.

Buckenham marshes ! I can add no more to it’s splendour, but feel it’s irresistible gravity drawing me, pulling me, like a plinth compressing me, to write it down,  so apologies for a further paragraph or two of utter drivel from Southwood’s finest wildlife webmaster (by default I may add,  there ain’t no one else, you can only be first in a race of one, or last, if you’re misanthropic and optimistic).

Sneaking around in the heat, quietly and slowly there’s all sorts of great stuff abroad. Brown Hawkers patrol, majestically golden in the visual acuity of the mid day sunshine heat, jostled by  bands of Migrant Hawkers & buzzed by Ruddy & Common Darters. The odd Chettis is calling distantly and every now and then the ping, ping of a Beardie, flitting American tan reflections in & out of the reed margins & over the frogbit filled dykes.
Hang softly around for long enough and there he is just laying in the shade, tounge sniffing the air every now and then. Natrix natrix, or our old friend the grass snake, glowing yellow collar and those lateral black bars, just waiting for a vibration to trigger a defensive slither into the adjacent scrub. I’ve seen three down here this September, even ended up pushing the bike along the bank for fear of running him over, as I so nearly did on that thundery August day before the lightning crackled through the intense atmosphere and reminded me of my fear of becoming a conductor, (never liked classical music). Another pad around and there’s a common lizard just darted under cover, first, and I’m sure the last of 2004. Drifting round in the daydream of a daydream day, a Black Tailed Skimmer, with no black tail  lands on my shirt. Sort of  monster from a sci fi future with no abdomen at all, just a gaping hole up at his thorax, and one ragged wing, pretty sad sight in a way, precursor to the end of the day and the end of summer.

So walking back up to the station I’ve passed through so many times on the way to another endless nowhere (or ‘work’ as I sometimes liked to call it), I stop for the last glance at a Snipe calling from overhead and wander over the line to the life I used to lead a few hours before.

See you again next time.

Wilds of Norfolk was set up because of our unquenchable enthusiasm for the Norfolk Broads,  our small part of the natural world. We thought we'd like to try and give something back by helping other people enjoy the countryside and it's wildlife as well as do our own little bit to promote an interest in the natural world and it's conservation , not only for the wildlife but for the sheer exuberance of the precious life we're lucky enough to get the chance to live.

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