To encourage you to go out and make the most of the Island’s natural assets, the JEP is running Nature Watch, a monthly photographic competition and online picture gallery.
Each month we will print your best nature pictures and also share them here on our website. And one winning photographer will receive a printed canvas of their image, courtesy of Framing Workshop.
Use the form below to upload your best pictures.
This month’s theme: Rural landscape (fields, tracks and hedgerows)
HAVING taken full advantage of Jersey’s diverse coastline throughout the months of summer, September now sees Nature Watch shifting its photographic allegiance to the countryside.
As the light becomes a little more autumnal, we begin to see subtle changes, too, in the natural environment around us.
While hedgerows begin to give serious thought to autumn bounty such as fruits, berries and chestnuts, field margins and narrow country tracks prove main highways for scores of insect species.
Remember, spiders and their webs are on visible high alert during September.
Fields and orchards also yield the first of their windfall fruit which offers free and ideal sugar content to butterflies, wasps and flies.
September also sees a flurry of fungi and field mushrooms, their shapes and colours often proving very camera-friendly.
Although not quite yet ready to change into autumn’s latest fashions, scores of Island tracks and trails are well worth a quiet visit, not least for the gradual gatherings of berry-seeking birds.
And keep an eye open for thistles that are about to seed – goldfinches in particular, are renowned as major ‘thistle lovers’.
Although summer is beginning to slip away, wildlife is already preparing for its own harvest festival.
Look out for goldfinches, Harvestman spiders, red admiral butterflies, parasol mushrooms, sweet chestnuts and blackberries.
We wish you luck with your camera in capturing some of September’s sights.
Mike Stentiford
