Autumn is a fruitful season with newly ripened haws

SOME people find autumn a bit depressing because it signals that summer is over and winter isn’t too far away, writes Dick Warner. 

But it’s always been my favourite season. It often produces the most pleasant weather of the year and in the countryside there’s a sense of relaxed abundance. John Keats understood this when he wrote of ‘mellow fruitfulness’ in his ‘Ode to Autumn’.

The birds have mostly finished with the gruelling labour of the breeding season and have the time to exploit the fruitfulness to put on a bit of weight. The one exception is a pair of wood pigeons in my hedge which are trying to rear one last pair of chicks before the short days and the cold weather arrive.