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The morning was, as they say around here, “back-endish”, dawning with the stillness of a day when summer had finally lost its momentum and autumn decay had begun. The sun’s lowering daily arc cast deep shadows, where the overnight chill lingered. It would be a day of spiders’ webs, drifting thistledown shredded by goldfinches, ripening berries and lethargic bumblebees clinging to the last of the knapweed flowers.
A flicker of red on top of a fence post caught my eye then disappeared almost as soon as I was aware of its presence. We had the briefest of glimpses of a redstart along this footpath on several occasions during the summer, but never a view as clear as this. Here was a young male, bold as brass, flitting between fence and pasture, catching flies stirred up by the grazing sheep. It’s difficult to pin down the exact hue of a redstart’s chest and tail; it lies somewhere in the last incandescent embers of a dying fire, as do its ash-coloured wings and charcoal black face mask. This individual was full of cocksure confidence, as if goading us to follow him along the line of posts then doubling back when we approached too closely.
Unlike the supremely adapted swallow aeronauts that skimmed the grass in the pastures and would shortly be migrating, the redstart merely flitted between perches on broad wings that seem better suited to following the erratic flight of an insect than to long-distance travel. All the more remarkable, then, that by the time the leaves have fallen here this robin-sized acrobat may well be catching flies stirred up by hooves of gazelles in Morocco.
September is a month for storing up memories, to be recalled during the short, cold days of winter. Here was one to savour. We walked on, but before rounding the bend in the footpath took a last look back. The darting speck of fiery orange had gone, perhaps already on his way to another continent.
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