Three Things to Notice in Nature This Weekend
Today’s super moon, birds and seasonal changes
I’ve had a really busy few days with work and not found the time to write about the subject I was planning to prompt you to notice this week. However, in between all the time I’ve spent staring at my screen, I’ve had to walk Noushi (I am so grateful for her on weeks like this) and I’ve taken a few breaks to sit in my garden or stare out of my office window. During these snatched moments, a few things stood out to me, so I actually have three simple things for you to notice/spot/connect with this weekend…
The moon - Today you can spot the last super moon of the year, the harvest moon, which will be at its fullest at 10:58am on Friday 29th September (but look out for it this evening too so you can properly howl at it!).
If you’d like to learn more about the harvest moon, I recommend reading this post by Lia Leendertz, which goes into some more detail about how full moons are named and what a super moon actually is.
Seasonal changes - If, like me, you are in the northern hemisphere, you’ll surely have spotted some crispy leaves by now! If you’re in the Southern hemisphere, maybe you’re excited to be seeing the first signs of spring… Either way, I’d love to know what seasonal changes you’ve noticed lately and what the change in season means for you.
The birds where you live - I went to give blood on Wednesday afternoon, and as I returned home, a murmuration of starlings at the end of the street caught my eye. When I got inside, my partner was standing in the garden commenting on how loud the starlings were. He wasn’t wrong - here’s a recording I did on my phone (annoyingly at just the moment a plane flew over and the starlings started to quiet down):
I love it when the starlings all line up like this on the roofs of the terraced houses - so neat and tidy! Their next step is to fly onto our fence, then into a big cedar tree behind our house, where they happily chatter before moving on to their roosting spot.
Off the back of this, I’d love to encourage you to notice a bird where you live. Can you identify it? If you can only hear it, use an app like BirdNET to help you ID it. If it’s a pigeon, can you tell if it’s a wood pigeon, a collared dove or something else? That satellite dish you can see on one of our neighbour’s houses has a pigeon’s nest behind it, which brings us a lot of entertainment (mostly because it brings to mind these hilariously sparse nests). Tell me what bird you’ve identified in the comments!
So there you go, three prompts to help you notice nature this week, wherever you live. Maybe you’ll try and notice all three of these things, maybe you’ll just focus on one, maybe you’ll forget all about reading this until you spot the moon in three days time and think, “That looks almost full…”. Either way, I’d love to know what you’ve noticed in nature this week, so please share in the comments! Let me know if you’d like me to start a chat too, so we can all share our photos…
P.S. I try to only share good news around here, but I can’t ignore the State of Nature report that was released this week and I wanted to pass it on to you all. This is why I do this work. I truly believe that the more tuned in to nature we are, the more we’ll notice the changes (both good and bad) happening around us and the more we’ll care about the natural world and want to do our bit to protect it.
You might also like…
Make your home a destination for birds
This is part of a series of guest posts being published throughout June. Find out more about Katie Reed of Outdoor Answer, who wrote this article, at the end of this post.
Look to the moon
Did you know that each full moon has a name? Most of these moon names originate from Native Americans, as tribes used the lunar phases as a method of timekeeping. Different tribes had different names for the full moons which were then adopted by colonial Americans and are now part of many people’s vernacular.
We have a new mystery bird in our garden seen three times but we think it could be a willow warbler, not been quick enough to take pics yet! I’ve been keeping a very loose notebook of all the wildlife we’ve seen in our garden this year and that takes us up to around 13 different species of bird I think. 😊🐦
Actually laughing out loud at those pigeon nests :'D Thanks for the morning giggle.
Ooh I'm grateful for your prompts as ever, Zabby! Thank you.
The woodpecker was back at the feeder yesterday.
I also noticed a mini murm of starlings all clustering onto a street lamp on the way to work yesterday. I was amazed at how many could fit onto such a small object!
I'm going to look out for the Harvest Moon today and in general I feel like this will be the first year ever when I'm actually tuning into autumn properly. I'm looking forward to noticing and learning.