It's a good year for autumn leaf colour

These photos are from last Sunday when we had a gloriously sunny day without a cloud in the sky - that's been pretty rare this month. And so we went for a walk to check out the leaf colour in our local area.

These first trees really 'popped' from a distance - but I'm not sure what kind of tree they are. This was at a free range poultry farm nearby and it has lots of these trees in the paddock fronting the lane; some of the leaves were very dark caramel and some were mixed colours as you can see in the photos below. They look like they might be some kind of oak, but not any oak that is native to Europe. They could be oaks from another continent, possibly N. American Red Oak? I also saw one planted by the car park of the Chinese restaurant that we went to earlier this week, so they are obviously ornamentals of some sort. If anyone recognises the species, please tell me as I am very curious.

I think this is one of those naked neck cockerels - not a patch on Randy for handsomeness. They are such bizarre looking creatures!

This is just along the road from the chicken farm which is at a high point for round here with a view - OK it's not much but we don't have many hills of any size with views over the countryside, and often views are from places where it's not easy to stop the car to take photos, more's the pity. 

Back again to the track we call the Melodious Warbler Walk. I'm finding it interesting to see how it is changing with the seasons, wildlife included. I can't wait to check it out in the spring and early summer next year as I know it's so good for wild flowers and butterflies. But now it's all about the trees and the leaf colours.

I tried my best to get the cows framed but it wasn't really to be and there was an annoying bramble in the way.... and the cows wouldn't pose in the right place like I asked them to!

Old trees and young colourful trees in the distance - more about that further down this post.

The end of the track and the field edge opposite has been planted with colourful species. I had thought that the dark purple leaves were euonymus as I have seen them planted elsewhere, but in fact were coloured bark dogwoods. They've been left to grow tall as shrubs so the bark isn't coloured (you need to prune them regularly for that), but they still have great autumn leaf colour.

The red coloured shrubs are a Viburnum of some sort, with attractive berries. It might be V. opulus, which has pretty flowers in spring and would be a good garden shrub, but I have to stop buying new plants as I can't cope with what I do have! My next garden, maybe.

Can you see the lone apple? This 'hedge' had a mix of oak, sweet chestnut, dogwood, viburnum, field maple, wild cherry and hornbeam or beech, plus others. The majority of pretty colours come from these fairly recent plantings around the fields as our local council sells mixed saplings cheaply in order to encourage regeneration of the field margins. So many of the old, original trees which are native to this particular area have disappeared over the years from the field margins, so it is great to see these colourful trees and shrubs which provide berries, fruit and nuts and shelter for the wildlife. Also many of the native trees around here don't colour up like this but tend to go a dull rusty brown, like oaks and many other native species. Similar plantings have been done along by any newish roads that have been built or widened in the last twenty years or so, so it adds a lot of interest to the countryside, with blossom as a bonus in the spring. It makes road journeys much more interesting at certain times of the year.  

A typical scene showing new planting and big old trees - it's cattle country around here, both beef and dairy, so cows are everywhere.

Unfortunately the next day was forecast to be sunny as well but as soon as we went out for another walk around the lake I featured a few posts ago, the sun disappeared. But here's a pic of me with my hair highlighted looking more like me again!

It's Halloween and I don't have any pumpkin photos, but if you celebrate I wish you a fun filled day and evening!