THE end of the month of August is always a sad time of year. To me, it signifies the turning of the season and the end of summertime.

Despite this year's more than average wet and windy summer, I will still miss the warmth of the sun, the vibrant summer wildlife, and long light evenings.

Even now the natural landscape has started to change, moving from the vivid colours of spring to drab winter browns, but it is not all gloom and doom as there are still new and fascinating aspects of our native wildlife to look forward to as we move into autumn.

The mushrooms and toadstools have already started to emerge and after such a wet summer it looks like it is going to be a bumper year.

Even as we slide into September many wild flowers are only now starting to make their presence felt.

On the marshland nature reserves of Redstone and Puxton Marsh, most of the summer's vegetation is beginning to die back or has found it way into the stomachs of the cattle which are slowly grazing these nature reserves, but a few wild flowers are only now standing proud and drawing real attention to themselves. Of particular note is the magnificent purple loosestrife.

If you move onto the drier heathland sites of Burlish Top and the Devil's Spittleful, the areas have just started to take on a real purple theme.

As the heather blooms across the heaths the effect is magnificent, changing the very landscape of the reserves. It is a truly breathtaking sight.

The woodland areas such as those found in Habberley Valley, are well advancing on an autumn theme.

Many plants and trees are now displaying crimson berries, while beach masts and hazel nuts are ripening rapidly.

Wild flowers seem to be in short supply in the woods, but if you look closely you will discover one of nature's miniature, and hence often over-looked, beauties - the Enchanter's Nightshade.

Although it has a romantic name, this unintrusive plant has no history of being used in magic and it is not even a true nightshade, but is, when examined closely, a beautiful wild flower.

If you leave Habberley's woods and move into the more open grassy areas, you are confronted with patches of purple flowering heather, a reminder of the site's once heathland past.

In among this heather and delicate stems of the wavy hair grass, the dainty blue flowers of the harebell can still be seen.

Despite the harebell's fragile appearance, it is one of the hardier of flowers, and to me summer has not completely gone until harsh autumn gales see of the last of these summer blooms.