Autumn is sneaking up on us. The sycamore's leaves are yellowing; the rowan berries are scarlet; the brambles are jet black. The swifts have left and the swallows are just a few days from heading back to Africa.

It's dark in Inverness around 8pm. But just before dusk, the almost never-ending line of raucous rooks in the sky warns me that darkness is about 15 mins away. During the day, the ever-changing chevrons of geese can be heard, long before they can be seen overhead.

I've always been fascinated by mass groupings of animals, ever since I watched David Attenborough programmes on the telly with those pictures of wildebeest migrating, in their thousands, across the African plains. And especially when they had to wade through swollen rivers, nervously on the look-out for hidden crocodiles on the ambush. Then the inevitable snapping and splashing. One down, but still safety in numbers.

But sometimes not so safe - when underwater predators round up a shoal of fish into a tumbling ball of flashing scales but you already know that this will be only a momentary distraction. Not many will be allowed to escape.

Sometimes you unwittingly find a mass of insects. I always want to itch when I move a planter in the garden only to discover that underneath is a moving surface of generations of slaters. All ages and sizes, josting to escape the sudden daylight.

But I've always loved nature illustrations when the picture is brimful of animals and birds, bursting to the four edges! Ever since I got my first Ladybird Book: WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN AUTUMN, I've been a fan of C F Tunnicliffe's drawings. I still collect his bird books. But surely these large groupings are a tad unnatural?

But I have to relate that only a week ago, early one wet & windy morning on the Isle of Eigg, (glamping with son), I picked up his binoculars to look at a cluster of oyster catchers by the shore, when I also noticed closeby a group of waddling greylag geese and, in between both of them, a bunch of very camouflaged curlews! Sweeping his binnies to the right, I was astonished to view 12 herons sheltering together below a rocky outcrop. They looked just like hunched old men in grey overcoats. They stayed motionless for a good hour after the sun had come out, and long after the field of lambs had moved from their rigid backs-to-the-rain-and-wind stance.

So even as Autumn approaches, there are groupings of animals silently getting ready for the end of Summer. I worry about the number of spiders that I will, no doubt, soon encounter indoors. Gawd!! Pesky beasties!!