Country Diary: Northumberland

The numerous heavy rain showers that we have had here during the last two months of this summer season have encouraged the weeds to flourish in the herbaceous borders and flower beds, and neighbors tell me it is the same in their gardens. This rain-soaked summer has produced more fungi in the fields than I can remember; one local naturalist told me that he had counted 42 different varieties, more than he can remember in many years of joining fungi forages. Deer, badgers, beetles and slugs enjoy a bite of fungi, and red squirrels will collect and hide them in their nests in the tree tops, as an emergency food store.

The wet weather will have helped to support the ponds which have recently been created in the Kielder Water and Forest Park in this county to provide more wildlife habitat. Two of these ponds have already been rated as of important conservation value because they have attracted different species of dragonfly, including the rare southern hawker and the lesser emperor. A local naturalist told me that during the early months of this year, a broad-bodied chaser dragonfly was reported in forest ponds in this county. The swifts and swallows which have nested for years in the eaves of my house are departing already for more settled, warmer territory. This is a week or two earlier than in previous years. The swifts departed first, and now the swallows and martins and their young are going too, and this will not be due to a shortage of nutritional food, as insects are still plentiful in the garden.

I have managed to collect apples and blackberries from trees and hedges, so I shall enjoy using these in autumn months, and a neighbor has just brought me some plums, which he said he cannot remember ripening as early as they have this autumn.