Early morning light is filtering through the trees. Here and there, sprigs of lichen and clusters of fungi peep out from the carpet of orange leaves that is covering the dark, damp ground. Somewhere overhead, hidden in the branches of the forest, a goldcrest is calling.
This weekend is officially the first weekend of autumn and, in Fulbourn Fen, a nature reserve in Cambridgeshire, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is beginning once again to conspire with the sun. But after such a long, hot, dry summer – and with the prospect of more extreme weather events on the horizon – autumn this year may be very different to the season John Keats celebrated in his ode.
