It was a quiet start to the duck shooting season on the 1st with no boats or guns to be seen or heard at the top end of the estuary on opening day.
We had good weather into the early part of this month, but there was an autumnal feel about it with the early mornings being noticeably cooler early on. The river level has remained quite low during this time. It has been a good year for most of the fruit trees round about the riverside.
With apple and plum doing a lot better than last year. The rowan trees have all got a good crop of berries on them, and it has been a bumper year for brambles.
The one tree that has been poor in this area is the Blackthorn with no sloes on them at all, so we will be struggling to make our annual batch of sloe gin this season! We are seeing more movement of birds along the estuary now with Snipe and Teal returning in the first week. We have also had the return of a Mute Swan (with the green darvix ring JTI) to this area of the estuary, for the sixth year running since its release in 2007 by the SSPCA.
The Ospreys have all moved on (our last sighting was on the 2nd), and most of the Swallows and Martins that were gathering up on the wires at the start of the month were all gone by the 20th.
We have been spending a bit more time up at the Willowgate Fishery again this month out on the weed cutting boat, we have been removing a lot more weed and the fishing has improved. Regular fisher (Barry) was having a good day on the 11th and was happy to pose for a photo.
The café has seen trade pick up with more people enjoying their selection scones and cakes. The SSPCA were back on the estuary again on the 13th with some more swans from their rescue centre that were ready for releasing back into the wild again, they soon joined up with other swans in the area and seem to be doing fine.
It has been good to see big numbers of Goldfinches again, back feeding on the Rebeccia seed heads along the river bank.
Right at the end of the month we were back into the bee hives again for more honey, the bees have been busy and we will get one last spin out of them for the year.
By the end of the month the leaves on the trees were turning, and on a couple of mornings we had a touch of ground frost.
There was some rain during the month but the river level was still low for the time of year.