Walking down from the woods across the wide rough area with rushes, two Skylarks got up, twittering, and perched briefly on the Bracken: a very special sight for London.
Down past the Pen Ponds at the side of a wood, a Green Woodpecker flew handsomely up into a tree, swiftly hiding itself round the back of the trunk.
With the rain, mushrooms are suddenly pushing up.
The acid grassland is dotted with large handsome puffballs; under the birches are a lone destroying angel, a small spherically-capped fly agaric, a brown birch bolete, and many smaller fungi including the amethyst deceiver.
The tail end of Hurricane Gonzalo is blowing leaves off the trees; the reserve is quite sheltered, and it is pleasant to work in the passing showers and bursts of sunshine, pulling up ivy and brambles, making space for grassland to regenerate and for new saplings to sprout. But with the mushrooms and the wind, it is at last starting to feel like autumn.