September Nature Diary (2024)

Collected treasures, migrating birds, and seed heads

Every month I curate a nature diary-style collection of my illustrations and observations of things I’ve noticed and been inspired by in my local environment. Make sure you never miss a post by subscribing to Drawn to Nature for free; and if you are minded to support my work, I’d be grateful if you would consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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September 2024

I usually look forward to September as a month of cooling temperatures combining with brisk, blue-sky days - but this year has been a disappointment in that sense. Although we’ve not had the torrential rain that has flooded much of the rest of the country, we have had endless-seeming periods of dull, grey days that have run one-into-the-next, making it more difficult to stay connected and engaged with the changing seasons.

A colourful, autumn-inspired spread of timed studies in my sketchbook

I’m sure that this is the reason why I’ve been consciously seeking out brighter colours than I would normally, and why I jumped at the opportunity to spend an hour or so with other creatives, happily drawing and painting timed studies from a series of ‘inspired by autumn’ references for September’s The Creative Flock drawing session with

Emma Carpendale

. Check out Emma’s Substack for an archive of lovely guided creative sessions.

Replay: 'Inspired by Autumn' drawing session

4th September

I spotted my first ‘v’ of geese arriving from the Arctic to spend the winter here in Northumberland. Well, I say ‘spotted’ but, of course, it was their energetic honking and the loud ‘whirring’ of their wings that first alerted me to their presence! It wasn’t possible to see what type of geese they were from the ground, but we are lucky to have quite a wide variety of geese, including Light-Bellied Brent Geese, Pink-footed Geese and Barnacle Geese, who all come to the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve every autumn. These are definitely early birds, as we don’t usually see the large migrations until October.

12th September

I’m a bit prone to picking up nature finds when I’m out on a walk at any time of year, but this becomes doubly true in autumn, when I’m usually returning with an interesting leaf, or a camera roll full of bright-coloured berries. This week has been all about the seeds and nuts, with a lot of conkers littering the ground beneath the horse chestnut trees and sycamore ‘helicopters’ twirling in the breeze. I’ve also been noticing the bright green, jewel-like acorns as they ripen on some young oak trees that I pass a couple of times a week. I love watching their shapes and then their colours change from this bright, vivid green to the mellow golden brown of the ripened acorn.

Green acorns forming and a fallen conker in its spiky case - both watercolour and ink sketches.

23rd September

It really feels like it was just a few weeks ago that I was learning to identify some of the many different types of umbellifers common to the British Isles, but the Hogweed has now largely gone over - leaving just their statuesque seed heads silhouetted along hedgerows, scrublands and field margins. I always feel that these elegant remains are one of the quintessential features of the ‘winter’ landscape and I don’t think I’ve ever noticed them quite so early in the year, before. Maybe I’m just more attuned to them having stopped to look at them more closely this summer?!

It inspired me to a bit of mixed media experimentation in my sketchbook. I began by laying down some background colour with three colours of Derwent Inktense pencils with water. I then drew in my hogweed seed heads with black ink and a dip pen, before adding some texture with Derwent Procolour pencils. I’m pretty happy with how this turned out and might dip in to mixed media a bit more frequently in future…

Hogweed silhouette - mixed media

28th September

This year has been a terrible one for me in my grandly-titled ‘kitchen garden’ (four raised beds, a series of soft fruit and fruit trees, and a greenhouse). I had already had a wobble at Christmas about the fact that over the past couple of years of growing my own fruit and vegetables I’d begun to lose the joy of the activity and felt it had become a ‘chore’ to be ticked off my never-ending list of ‘should do’ tasks. I’d pondered whether a fallow year for growing things might be an option that would allow me to return, refreshed, twelve months later. In the end, I didn’t listen to this little voice, but I maybe should have done!

The weather conspired to stop me sowing any seeds until about 6 weeks later than I would normally as the light levels in January and early February just weren’t stable enough for anything to germinate, even in the heated propagator on our studio windowsill. When I did eventually get things sown and then planted out in late April, we had a cold spell that stopped all growth for a good few weeks - by which time the slug and snail armies had feasted on most of the young plants. Then finally, my pea and bean shoots and brassicas (all of which had been well-protected from slugs) were shredded to nothing by our resident wood pigeons! By that point, I’d gotten so out of the habit of doing anything in the garden, that I just sort of ‘forgot’ about the plants that had survived, so our harvest has been pretty meagre!

Of course, the joy of growing fruit and vegetables is that there’s always the opportunity to start afresh each year! Maybe after what effectively became a ‘fallow’ year, I’ll feel more enthusiasm again in 2025.

Whilst the veggies have suffered this year, we’ve had some very good fruit crops, including a lot of blackcurrants earlier in the summer, followed by raspberries, strawberries and now apples. The strawberries are still fruiting, even as their leaves start to turn - I love how the red of the berries clashes slightly with the leaves. This definitely isn’t something we get to see every year, so I’m enjoying it this autumn!