6 September 1905: The Virginia creeper is turning crimson, and promises to adorn houses and cottages with its glowing colours
What a Surrey woman described to me as autumn “chintz” are daily more noticeable on the trees; the ends of the long-fingered leaves of the horse-chestnuts are curling and brown, the sycamores show sickly patches here and there, the oaks are growing richer in colour, and crisp beech leaves are falling. The Virginia creeper is turning crimson, and promises to adorn houses and cottages with its glowing colours. Some of the laburnums are wrecks already, for there are few leaves remaining on them to wither; instead, the consumers of the leaves, small yellow grubs, hang in long strings from the stripped twigs.
The blue tits have been busily at work picking off the grubs they could find on twigs or leaves, but they are not so agile as the willow wrens, which, like fly-catchers, hover in the air and snap the wind-swayed caterpillars from their silken cords. But the willow wrens which came to one tree, at least, have not been visible for two or three days; perhaps they have drifted southward, leaving their work unfinished.
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