Well, it’s official now, it’s autumn.
First thing you notice is that people begin scraping their car windows in the morning.
Luckily the central heating keeps everything cosy, and if you don’t have a need to step outside – or look outside the window – you wouldn’t really notice the difference at first.
But the signs of seasonal change are everywhere.
The temperature gauge at night says 0 degrees, the birds start gathering for their big migrations, and the trees have put on colours in the autumn spectrum.
After my first German summer in 25 years – which was a blast – I’m now preparing for my first winter.
The days are noticeably shorter, very short in fact.
While the height of summer provided 16+ daylight hours, now we’re down to roughly 11 hours, and on the 21st of December it will be 7+ hours.
Not much light to be out and about photographing.
The change of seasons became very obvious the other day when I was sitting by my lounge window while observing the surroundings during some heavy rains.
The mood in the landscape was different, there was darkness in the air that I hadn’t noticed during earlier months.
The smells were also different and just seemed fresher and from farther away.
Not sure what exactly triggers the birds to gather, but the skeins have certainly been busy exercising their formation flying over recent weeks.
Not too long and they will all be gone till spring.
