Country diary: Summer's silence still needs to be heard | Mark Cocker

Buxton, Derbyshire: It's a melancholic time of year for some of us naturalists, but better to hear nature's quietening than the roar of night-time motorcyclistsIt is a conundrum of our temperate latitudes that the season we associate with life's fullest extent is the period when the "biophony" (nature's collective music) is at its most restricted. There is greater insect sound (flies, bees, grasshoppers) but birdsong has fallen away and, in a sense, I find the silence disconcerting, because it expresses the end of all that upwelling life of the past 10 weeks. In its way, summer is more melancholy than any other time of year.I also love the silence, however, as I sit here at last light. Summer's residue of music is foregrounded by the stillness: young whitethroats chakking at our hedge: the curling line of autumn's first robin and a late thrush, banging out a dozen half-hearted notes before succumbing to the wider mood. Continue reading...