With the arrival of September, days are shortening rapidly and signs of autumn are apparent in the countryside, writes JONO LEADLEY of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust

With many summer flowers long since setting seed, a welcome splash of colour is provided in the countryside by nature’s harvest of berries and fruit. The shiny reds of hawthorn and guelder rose berries contrast with the blue of (blackthorn) sloes and black elderberries.

This colour is a welcome sight to us and is a way of advertising to passing birds and mammals that there is a bountiful supply of food on offer. As animals feed on these berries they become unwitting carriers of the plants’ seeds, deposited at a distance in droppings.

This partnership works well. The plants get to spread their seeds, the animals get a nutritious feed and help plant a further food supply for years to come – although they are unaware of this of course...

If you come across an elder bush laden with fruit, wait quietly at a short distance and you may be rewarded with close-up views of a range of small birds coming to feed. One September I watched an elder tree at Flamborough Head for a few minutes and tallied lesser and common whitethroats, blackcap, blackbird, song thrush and a rare barred warbler from Eastern Europe all gorging themselves on the small black berries.

Other splashes of colour are provided by autumn flowers, such as the autumn gentian, Gentianella amarelle. This attractive late-flowering plant can be looked for at a number of chalk and limestone grasslands on the Yorkshire Wolds such as Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves Wharram Quarry and Kiplingcotes Chalk Pit.

Autumn gentians are little plants with a reddish stem, paired leaves and pink-mauve tubular flowers that branch off the main stem, ending in a star with an inner ring of little ribbons that protrude upwards. The flowers are unusual in that they can have four or five petals, sometimes on the same plant! Also known as felwort, autumn gentians contain a number of interesting chemical compounds and were historically used to treat a range of digestive ailments.

Late autumn on the windswept east coast echoes to the mournful cries of grey seals. These large marine mammals return to the rocky coast around Flamborough Head and elsewhere to have their pups. Scanning carefully from the cliffs you may see the heads of seals poking out of the sea, particularly in calm weather.

The long, sloping forehead and ‘Roman’ nose of the grey seal distinguishes this species from smaller harbour or common seals. When the tide is out, you may see seals up on the rocks. They move into the shelter of caves to give birth and suckle their young. Across the Humber Bridge and along the northeast coast lies Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust’s Donna Nook Nature Reserve which hosts an impressive grey seal colony. For those wishing to make the journey, this is well worth a trip in November and December when close views of large numbers of adult and pup grey seals can be enjoyed. See http://www.lincstrust.org.uk/donna-nook for details.

Also noisy during the autumn are tawny owls. With approximately 50,000 breeding pairs, tawnies are the most widespread and common owl in Britain and yet due to their strictly nocturnal habits are rarely seen.

These highly territorial owls breed in late winter, and autumn is a time when they start to re-establish their territories and kick out the young of the year. Sadly, the future prospects for young birds are not great with at least two thirds dying before reaching a year old.

Only male tawnies make the familiar, trembling hoot. This is effectively the male owl’s song and is used to attract a mate and claim a stake in a patch of land – the territory. Any other owls hearing this and not up for a scrap will retreat when they hear the hoot of a territorial owl.

Both males and females, along with young birds, make a sharp kewick call, used by birds to keep in contact with each other. Together the familiar ‘too whit, too whoo’ is a corruption of the description originally written by Shakespeare in Love’s Labour’s Lost and reflects the male’s hoot being answered perhaps by the contact call of another, possibly female bird.

For information about wild places you can visit across Yorkshire, please visit www.ywt.org.uk.

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust is a charity relying on the support of members of the public. If you would like to get involved please visit the website above.

BLOB Jono Leadley is the Northern Regional Manager of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust