Can YOU conker our Autumn QUIZ?
Do you know your cribbars from your ickle-prickles? As the season of mellow fruitfulness begins ...
THIS week saw the autumn equinox, marking the first day of astronomical autumn in the northern hemisphere. And so evenings are getting darker noticeably earlier. Following the hottest summer on record in England, trees such as hawthorns have produced a bumper crop of berries. To get you in the mood for chillier days and logfire nights, MARK MASON has set an autumn quiz...
1. Which poet composed ‘To Autumn’, the 1819 poem which begins ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’?
2. This season sees swifts migrating to Africa. Three swifts monitored in 2016 broke the world record for continuous time spent in the air. How long did they go without touching land? Ten days, ten weeks or ten months?
3. What is the missing subject in the old saying: ‘Dry your . . . in October, or you’ll always be sober?’
4. Name the pigment which trees stop producing, thus causing leaves to lose their green colour?
5. Which autumnal farming practice ce has been banned in England and Wales es since 1993?
6. Which world championship takes place ce every year in Northamptonshire on the he second Sunday in October? Something that at occurs naturally every autumn is a crucial ial part of the sport.
7. What is a cribbar, which appears in Cornwall once or twice a year — often in autumn — for a couple of hours at a time? ?
8. A reminder about which event, which happens every October, is provided by an alternative word for autumn?
9. Bonfire Night takes place every November. How did Guy Fawkes reduce the pain of his execution following the Gunpowder Treason Plot of 1605?
10. Why should you wait for the first frost of autumn before picking your sloe berries to make sloe gin?
11. Why is autumn particularly important to the Queen’s first grandchild?
12. On September 5, 1958, Britain’s heaviest ever what was recorded in Horsham? It weighed 6.5 ounces.
13. A storm of October 1859 (which sank the ship the Royal Charter off the coast of Wales) prompted Vice-Admiral Robert Fitzroy to create what?
14. Why do Daubenton’s and Brandt’s bats gather to sing at the entrances to caves in the autumn?
15. Maple, ash and sycamore trees produce seeds with which nickname, due to the way they fly through the air?
16. Squirrels are starting to bury acorns. What is the bird that does the same?
17. This bright red berry gets its name from an old German word meaning ‘ to redden’ — not to be confused with the Mr Bean actor. Which berry?
18. This mushroom got its name because its tubes coming from the ground look like devices to allow the dead and buried to hear. Its name?
19. The Siberian hamster’s testicles swell to how many times their normal size in preparation for mating — 2, 5 or 17 times?
20. This bird (below) migrates to the UK. Is it a twine, string or knot?
21. Hedgehogs begin hibernating. What is a baby hedgehog called — a hedge-nipper, a hoglet or an ickle-prickle?
22. The pheasant shooting season starts on October 1. The record number shot in a single day was set on December 18, 1913, when George V, his son the Prince of Wales and six other men dispatched how many birds — 843, 1,402 or 3,937?
23. Spiders mate in October. This breed of spider shares its name with which ecclesiastical rank — parson, cardinal or bishop?