It’s September 14th now, so, it’s around that time when you start to to accept, Winter will arrive, our time is limited, better enjoy the last days of sunshine. But it’s a quite ambiguous time of year, on previous years, the week after this day could be, bitter cold, like Winter came early, or, beautiful sunshine, like it’s July! Indeed, I remember going to primary school and being quite frustrated with the fact that, it might rain and be cloudy for a lot of the summer holidays, but the sun would come right through once we started school in September!
I actually don’t dislike Winter with the same intensity other people do, or to put it another way, I don’t dislike Winter per se, just certain things about it. Long nights means more time spent in our wonderful universe as the stars, galaxies and planets are in our skies for much longer. It means there’s different birds to be seen, as many of them escape the even colder weather further up north. So I’m not quite as gloomy as other people might be about the Winter, but the one thing I hate about it is that, I absolutely despise being cold. I have very negative associations with it, for some reason, being cold gives me an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness and despair. I hate the fact that the world itself no longer keeps me warm, as it did during the Summer months. I hate that the only way to stay warm in the Winter is to pay for gas central heating, so often times you’re wondering, do I remain cold or pay extra money, while in the Summer you can stay warm for free. And to all the people who say, “Well actually there are plenty of ways to stay warm for free in the Winter”, don’t delude yourself, none of those ways work and you know it!
About two days ago, for the first time in months, I felt cold during the evening. And this morning, it also took me a while to start feeling warm. The warmth is starting to die out!
But weirdly enough, by November, I’m usually happy enough with the cold and the dark, I’ve settled into it you could say. I think it’s the seasonal ambiguity that I find difficult, the days are getting colder, the nights shorter, but there’s still plenty of bees about and an occasional blast of summer sun.
And boy did I ever experience seasonal ambiguity when I went to the Nagle Mountains yesterday.
I set off for the Nagle Mountains, in absolutely beautiful sunshine. With my spirits really high, I parked my bike at the base of the mountain range, and up I went to take in the wonderful views.
And there were a lot of bees in the Nagle Mountains, but not as many as in previous trips. Here are some of the ones I saw.
Last year the bees stayed around until at least November. I hope it’s the same this year, they’re one of my favourite insects, and I don’t feel ready to say goodbye to these little guys just yet!
I got my first recording of a bird as I moved towards the summit of Knocknaskagh, a goldcrest!:
https://xeno-canto.org/1039146
Wish I’d seen the bird aswell, they’re quite nice, so tiny and so cute! But maybe I’ll see one another day.
And a bit later, I caught my first sighting of a peregrine falcon in flight. I’ve seen them a few times in urban areas, but never in the mountains, and never in flight. HURRAY!!!
As I headed north through the mountains, I also saw one of my favourite Summer visitors, house martins in flight!
House martins, much like swallows, tend to fly in big groups together in the sky, so fast and so acrobatic, truly a pleasure to watch.
After this excitement, I reached the northern cairn, as I call it, one of my favourite places for just sitting down and being close to tears because the landscape around me is so beautiful.
I sat down, and took it all in, still beautiful weather!
But you’ll notice a certain ominousness in the sky in the next photo. Clouds, evil, evil clouds, amassing their sick and perverted armies, and they were heading for me. Heading for me at a frightening pace.
So it looked like I was going to get wet, but I assumed it wouldn’t be too bad.
But not too bad it was not. It was a really cold rain. Pretty much straight away I was absolutely shivering, my hands so cold I didn’t know how I was going to cycle home if this freezing rain continued. I ducked into a woodland, which gave me some temporary relief from being, absolutely freezing.
To be fair, it looked epic. Very heavy rain, with the wind so strong it pretty much rained horizontally! I wish I’d gotten photos actually, but I seldom risk getting the camera out when it’s raining.
You’ve probably guessed there was a bit of catastrophizing going on. Even though I knew I wasn’t so cold as to be in any sort of real danger, I didn’t know how, assuming it continued raining, and at this low temperature, how I was going to make the approximately, I think, 3 hour journey home, an hour to get off the mountain, and two hours to cycle home. But so deep was I in catastrophizing, eh, city, that I completely forgot about the bloody obvious solution. I had packed my trusty raincoat!
In principle raincoats aren’t really for warmth, just to keep the rain off, but this one has a bit of warmth in it, just enough to endure the cold. So I put on the raincoat, and now warmish, enough to endure anyway, I triumphantly left the woodland!
I was definitely working myself into a panic over what happened, because the rain stopped within minutes, but it did feel a bit scary to be so, very cold and very far from any significant shelter. Luckily the weather was just fucking with me and it returned to Summerish conditions after that.
As I headed towards the base of the mountain for home, I got this recording of a dunnock. They are very nice little brown birds and make some really pleasant sounds:
https://xeno-canto.org/1039140
And then I reached my bike, time to begin cycling home. It’s hard to tell whether it’s because the Nagle Mountains has it’s own micro-climate or because we have entered that time of year when the seasons can’t decide whether they are more Summerish or more Winterish, but from this point on it was too hot for anything other than shorts and t-shirt. Strange how a short time before that I was so cold I was starting to panic.
As I cycled home, I made plenty of stops, because there were plenty of birds. A short distance from the mountains I caught sight of and sound of some starlings. Starlings, are, one of, the best, birds, ever.
And here’s their sound:
https://xeno-canto.org/1039143
Starlings are life long song learners. So they are like the kind of musician who keeps producing great music well into their seventies, as opposed to the kind of musician who had a few hits in their youth that they keep playing into their seventies without writing any new material. Starlings are all kinds of creative and brilliant!
For pretty much the remainder of the journey home, I would have robins singing to me. That’s exactly as beautiful as it sounds. I would be cycling along, and hear a robin sing, when I cycled further up I would hear another robin sing, as I cycled further I would hear another robin sing, and so on. An absolutely wonderful way to cycle home. Here’s one of the recordings.
https://xeno-canto.org/1039151
And do you know what else is wonderful about robins? They sing all year. So, as the song of other birds goes silent for the Winter, these birds will keep singing, raising our spirits, and will continue to make us feel such awe, at the thought that a mind so different from ours in so many ways, still creates beautiful music.
This might well be the last long cycle for this year. An earlier sunset combined with the always present problem of travel anxiety means it could well be shorter journeys on the bike for the remainder of 2025. But, if this is the last long cycle, to experience that while robins sang to me was just so magical!
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