I remember, with some fondness, the infamous long hot summer of 1976. Now, exactly fifty years on, the weather records set then have tumbled as each month goes by. Up on Strumpshaw Hill, very close to my house, Ernest Hoyos has been recording the local weather since the 1970s and just a few weeks ago he made the national news. He recorded a provisional measurement for the highest June temperature in the UK - 37.7c (99.9f). A visit to his weather station by several crisp white laboratory coats was carried out, his digital Met. Office equipment was examined and verified. It now stands that this Norfolk Broads temperature reading is a new high (or rather low) in our unabated climate change crisis.

The River Wensum, among others, has suffered heart-breaking fish die off. Already stressed by low oxygen levels, a short burst of rain was all that was required to wash enough pollutants into the river to kill thousands of fish. Most ponds are dry to cracking, and trees are already shedding their leathery leaves, seemingly in a hurry for autumn to arrive. Despite the dry weather, seeds, nuts and hedgerow fruit is plentiful, with brambles producing a bumper crop of blackberries much earlier than usual. This is a response by plants and trees to extreme conditions and an attempt to pass on their genes in the unfortunate event that they don’t make it out of the summer alive.                          

I wrote recently about swallows often having a brood still in the nest in September, but like many birds this year it has been an impossibility. Two of my tit boxes, one of great tits, the other blue tits, had a nest full of dead young chicks. Either due to a lack of food or, more likely, from the extreme heat. Bird migration has been earlier too, at the time of writing my local swallows have already been gathering in twittering flocks, but unusually they have been sitting together in the shade of a neighbour’s tree! I’m assuming the telegraph wires and roof tiles have been too hot for them. They still all fly off in obscure panic in the way that swallows do, but quickly return to the same tree. After a week or so of this excitement they will set off on migration for South Africa.  

Many people, including myself, have spent the summer insisting that it has been a great butterfly year, and it has been for most species - with all three of the common whites; peacock, painted lady, gate keeper and meadow brown, all being in good numbers where the habitat is favourable. I even had a migratory clouded yellow in my garden! Hummingbird hawkmoths have been a daily sight on my lavender bed too. The biggest butterfly surprise in the county is the appearance of Queen of Spain Fritillary in north-west Norfolk with sightings at NWT Ringstead Down and on the Holkham Estate.

I think it has also been a great grasshopper year. Having been involved this summer with the Citizen Zoo’s large marsh grasshopper breeding programme, my attention has been drawn to these familiar but often overlooked group of insects. It is surprising how many species can be found in most gardens, particularly if you leave an area wild and overgrown. As well as the more familiar grasshopper species, I have found in my own garden some marvellous examples, such as the long-winged cone-head, oak bush-cricket and dark bush-cricket. My growing interest in orthoptera has been further stoked by a trip out to NWT Buxton Heath to survey bog bush-crickets with a small team from the Citizen Zoo. Confined to the wetter parts of lowland heathland, the bog bush-cricket is nationally scarce, with Buxton Heath being a particularly important site for the species. Although widespread in England, its highly localised distribution reflects the scarcity of this important habitat. The survey was confined to only a small part of the site, although a count of 25 males and 18 females suggests a thriving population here.

What to look for in October
October is when rarity hunting birdwatchers really start to twitch. Any manner of unusual migrant bird from as far as Siberia or North America can turn up and; like a Martini cocktail, anytime, anyplace, anywhere. If assertive north-easterly winds blow in and then suddenly drop off to allow an early morning sea fret to form, it can result in a ‘fall’ of migrant birds, and the North Norfolk coast is renowned for these events. The coastal scrub at places such as NWT’s Holme Dunes or Cley Marshes can be festooned with unusual birds, an avian Christmas tree bedecked with all manner of warblers, pied flycatchers and black redstarts. Sea-watching can be equally fruitful in October with various sea duck species and the likes of shearwater and little auk being pushed close to the shore by the month’s notorious stormy weather.