Frost

The brightness of the moon, descending towards dawn, leaves the clear-fell bathed in light. Dead grass stems, thickened with frost, have the appearance of fragile bone, creating an expanse pale colour that contrasts with the dark depths of the silent conifers standing sentinel behind. Each of my two dogs leaves a visible cloud of exhaled air, like two furry steam trains puffing their way along the forest track. It is the end of a beautiful night and a bright clear morning lies ahead.

Overhead a procession of Rooks is heading out from the overnight roost to seek food in the surrounding fields. They are early risers, unlike the Woodpigeons who stumble from sleep and their treetop perches as I approach the shelterbelt that runs alongside this part of the track. A bird rises from the verge ahead of the dogs, a rounded body carried on broad wings – a Woodcock and my first of the winter in the forest. They are not uncommon here at this time of the year, resting by day in the cover of the forest and feeding by night on the soft arable that surrounds. Presumably, they must feed in the shadow of the forest on nights like this when the frost crisps the soil’s surface and makes probing for worms that much more difficult.

A larger shadow can be seen further ahead, slipping quietly across the track before pausing to take stock of me and the dogs. It is the fox whose scent I often smell along this particular stretch, stringent and clawing on the throat. Satisfied it slips into the undergrowth and away. A late Tawny Owl calls, the call itself somewhat shrill and incomplete. Perhaps this is a young bird setting up territory for the first time. The call is sufficient, however, for one of the resident birds to respond with a mature, resonant hoot. Soon other birds respond, a brief overture of noise before silence returns.

It is then that I pick up the flight calls of Redwing passing overhead. These birds may be on the move because of the colder conditions pushing in from further north. Frozen ground can spell disaster for them, restricting access to the soil-dwelling invertebrates on which they depend. These small thrushes seem to exist on a knife-edge at this time of the year, on the move continually to seek out the best feeding conditions and making journeys that may carry them south into continental Europe or west towards Ireland.

In many ways I find this the best time of the year to be out in the forest. There is none of the dry heat of summer or the damp of later autumn. It is crisp, clear and makes you feel alive.

A forest palette

The patches of clear-fell are coming into their own now. Several seasons on from when the conifers were harvested, the ground cover has now developed into a sward that, although dominated by grasses, contains a diversity of colours and forms. The sward’s colour palette is definitely slipping towards autumn though, the flowering grass heads now faded to take on pale golden hues. Here and there the rich yellow of ragwort stands strident, balanced by the pale blues and soft purples of vipers bugloss and vetch.

Although the sward looks dry and brittle, it is still heavy with moisture from overnight rain and my trousers are quickly soaked, much like the dogs that follow at my heel along the narrow track that snakes back towards the road. The strong, almost acrid scent of a fox hangs on the air, proving that it is still around even though I have not seen it for several weeks. The dogs note its passing too, an audible sniff as two heads drop to the ground and cast around.

A moth, pale in colour and heavily worn skips up from the path before I can identify it and is away across the broken ground. In the distance, a line of beech fringes the road, a veneer of deciduous woodland in a landscape dominated by regimented lines of conifers. Beneath the beeches it is dry, there is no sward here despite the thin canopy that casts a soft green light onto the ground below. I like these beeches; they remind me of home and of the great beech hangers of my youth. The silvery-grey trunks reach up towards the canopy and the spacing of the trees gives a sense of being inside some airy outdoor cathedral. This sense is heightened by the stillness of the air and the early morning calm: no traffic, no planes and little bird song at this late season.

Even though I rarely vary my route, these early morning walks seem ever changing thanks to light, season and weather. You get a real sense of place by visiting the same site over time, learning its changing moods and responding to them subconsciously. Right now, the forest is calming and there is a sense of timely transition from summer into autumn. The forest smells autumnal and the early morning mist, an increasing feature of these autumn mornings, hints at the days that lie ahead. Some say that we’ll get an Indian Summer, one last hoorah to round off a summer of celebration, but I am not sure that it will feel right. The transition from summer to autumn is a gradual process and, judging by how the forest feels, it has already started.