The Earth as the Sun lights it at the September equinox: day and night are equal all over the world.
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In 2022 the world agreed to protect 30 per cent of its land and sea by 2030. A new global check, published on 23 September, finds the target can still be met if countries keep their promises. About a fifth of the land is protected now. The sea is lagging, at about a tenth, so that is where the push must go.
Read more: Together for the Ocean →In Northumberland, 7,500 acres of Emblehope Moor have been bought for nature. The hope is to bring back golden eagles, curlews, black grouse and beavers to land that was drained and grazed by sheep for generations. Curlews, with their long curved bills, have become rare across Britain.
Read more: BirdGuides →Green ShootsOn 24 September Indonesia announced a new national agency to look after its peatlands and mangroves and to stop forest fires before they start, with mapping, early warning and village fire teams. Drained peat burns easily, and the smoke can fill the skies across South-East Asia.
Read more: Cabinet Secretariat of Indonesia →On the island of Leyte in the Philippines, the environment department is planting 45,000 native trees to bring back forest cover and help hold the hillsides together in heavy rain.
Read more: Daily Tribune →Native trees are the kinds that grew in a place naturally. They suit the local soil and weather, and the local insects, birds and animals already know how to live with them.
Peat is soil made of plants that died in waterlogged ground and never fully rotted. It builds up by only about a millimetre a year, yet the world’s peatlands hold about twice as much carbon as all its forests.
Green ShootsIn the 1800s, logging and fire stripped the forests of Marinette County in Wisconsin. Today trees cover four-fifths of the county again, and its own county forest, one of the first in the state, spreads over more than 230,000 acres. Over half its rivers and streams are now rated outstanding or exceptional.
Read more: Resilience →On 9 September, a willow oak was planted in Battery Park, New York: the first of 3,000 trees across the United States, one for each person lost on 11 September 2001.
Read more: Good Good Good →An acre is a little smaller than a football pitch. So 230,000 acres is about 930 square kilometres: more than five times the size of Washington DC.
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From Alaska, bar-tailed godwits are setting off for New Zealand and Australia: one of the longest non-stop journeys of any bird. In 2022 a young godwit flew 13,560 kilometres in 11 days without landing once.
Read more: Guinness World Records →In East Africa the great herds of wildebeest and zebra are crossing the Mara River between Tanzania and Kenya, following the rains to fresh grass, as they do each year from about July to October.
Read more: National Geographic →Before setting off, a godwit eats until about half its weight is fat, then shrinks its stomach and gut so it can fly lighter. It does not stop to eat or drink on the way.
Wild TidingsOff Australia’s east coast, humpback whales are turning south again, many with calves born in the warm waters of the north this winter. Until about November they can be seen from headlands as they head for feeding grounds near Antarctica.
Read more: Australian Government →In Kazakhstan, a young Amur tiger named Umit, meaning “hope”, has been released into the Ile-Balkhash Nature Reserve: the first tiger set free there in around 70 years, where tigers had died out completely.
Read more: Global Rewilding Alliance →Wherever you are, September is a month of movement: birds gathering in flocks, insects feeding up, and the first arrivals or departures of the season.
Kazakhstan’s own Caspian tigers died out last century. Their closest living relatives are Amur tigers, so they were chosen to bring tigers back.
Wild TidingsScientists have named the first new species of wild cat in more than a hundred years: the Tilcayo tiger cat, Leopardus tilcayo, from the misty Yungas cloud forests of the Bolivian Andes. Spotted like a tiny leopard, with rounded ears, it is a little smaller than a house cat.
Read more: CBS News →New Zealand’s kākāpō, the world’s heaviest parrot, has had a record season: 90 chicks, taking the population to 325, the most in 75 years. In 1995 there were just 51.
Read more: NZ Department of Conservation →Black bears are thriving again in the southern United States. In Arkansas, where only 40 to 50 were left, there are now about 5,000.
Read more: Good Good Good →Kākāpō is a Māori name: kākā means parrot and pō means night. The kākāpō feeds at night and cannot fly, so it climbs trees instead.
Wild TidingsOn 23 September Kenya launched a five-year plan for the mountain bongo, a shy, striped forest antelope that lives wild only in Kenya and is critically endangered. The aim: half as many again by 2030, and 750 living wild by 2075.
Read more: fundsforNGOs News →Solar farms with wild flowers underneath are becoming havens. In Minnesota a five-year study found twenty times as many native bees, and another US study nearly twice as many kinds of grassland bird as in nearby fields.
Read more: EcoPortal →On 30 August, a turtle charity in Veracruz, Mexico, released over 3,200 baby sea turtles into the Gulf from nests it had kept safe.
Read more: Good Good Good →In the Ecuadorian Amazon, seven Siekopai women kept 235 river turtle eggs safe and released 208 hatchlings into the Aguarico River.
Read more: Mongabay →On Palmyra Atoll, a wildlife refuge about 1,000 miles south of Hawaii where fishing is not allowed, coral reefs bleached in the heat of 2023 are recovering, with baby corals appearing within three years. Scientists say three things help: plenty of grazing fish such as parrotfish, pink coralline algae holding space for young corals, and a healthy number of predators.
Read more: NPR →The high seas, the open ocean beyond any country’s waters, cover nearly half the planet. On 23 September the High Seas Treaty, the first law to protect life out there, reached 100 countries. Its first meeting, in January, can begin to set up great ocean sanctuaries.
Read more: High Seas Alliance →Ebb & FlowSpain’s consultation on 23 new marine protected areas closed on 15 September. Covering 22,000 square kilometres, mostly round the Canary Islands, they would shelter seagrass, sea turtles and coral forests.
Read more: Oceana Europe →The Yurok Nation has completed the return of the Blue Creek watershed, 19,000 hectares of coastal rainforest by the Klamath River: California’s largest land-back conservation deal. Blue Creek is the salmon’s first cool refuge on a river freed when its four great dams came down.
Read more: Mongabay via Resilience →Since the dams came down, more than 20,000 chinook salmon have swum up the Klamath, reaching about nine-tenths of their old range.
Read more: Inside Climate News →Returning land to the Indigenous peoples who cared for it first, so they can look after it again in their own way.
Ebb & FlowThe highest spring tides of the year often come around the equinoxes, when the Sun lies over the equator and lines up its pull with the Moon’s. On coasts everywhere, watch for unusually high and low water in the days after the full and new moons.
Read more: National Oceanography Centre →Plastic bags found on UK beaches have fallen by 80 per cent since shops began charging for them, the Marine Conservation Society has found.
Read more: Marine Conservation Society →Nothing to do with the season: a spring tide is one that “springs up” higher than usual. It comes twice a month, near the new and full moons, when the Sun and Moon pull in line.
About 97 per cent of the Earth’s water is salty sea, and most fresh water is frozen in ice or hidden underground. The world’s lakes, rivers and streams together hold less than one hundredth of one per cent.
Botanists in western Thailand have described a new plant, Thismia daemona, in Thong Pha Phum National Park. It has no green leaves at all: it lives on fungi underground and pushes up a small black flower with horn-like tips and two reddish “eyes”. Fewer than 50 are known.
Read more: ScienceDaily →In South Africa and Western Australia, September is wildflower month. After the winter rains, daisies and everlastings carpet the ground in bright sheets of orange, yellow and pink.
Read more: SANParks →A daisy with dry, papery petals that keep their colour long after the flower is picked, which is how it got its name.
Bloom & SporeIn the north, the first cool, damp nights bring fungi up through grass and leaf litter. What we see is only the fruit: the real fungus is a web of fine threads running through soil and wood, often linking the roots of trees and passing water and food between them.
Read more: The Wildlife Trusts →In September Australia held its first burial in a coffin grown from mushroom roots. Made from mycelium and hemp, it breaks down in about 45 days and feeds the soil around it.
Read more: 1News →Turn a fallen mushroom over and look underneath the cap. Some have thin gills like the pages of a book, some have tiny holes like a sponge, and some have soft teeth. Each kind has its own pattern.
Mycelium is the main body of a fungus: a mass of fine threads that grows through soil, wood and leaves. A mushroom is just the part that pops up to spread its spores.
Soil is made as rock breaks down and living things add to it, and it is made very slowly. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that it can take more than 1,000 years to form a single centimetre of soil.
Read more: UN FAO →Healthy soil is full of life: fungi, bacteria, worms, mites and tiny insects, all breaking down dead leaves and turning them back into food for plants. A single teaspoon of healthy soil holds more living things than there are people on Earth.
Read more: UN FAO →Lay a plank or flat stone on bare ground and lift it a week later. Count the creatures you find underneath, then put it back gently.
The Atlantic hurricane season peaks around 10 September, when the ocean is warmest, and in mid-September India’s summer monsoon, the seasonal wind that brings the rains, begins to withdraw.
Read more: NOAA →At the equinox on 23 September, day and night are close to equal all over the world. Autumn begins in the north and spring in the south.
Read more: Royal Museums Greenwich →Each evening this month, note the time of sunset. You will see it come earlier in the north, and later in the south, by a few minutes every few days. In London, sunset comes more than an hour earlier by the end of the month.
By the end of July, China had more solar power built than coal power: 1,288 gigawatts of solar against 1,285 of coal. In the first half of the year, coal made less than half of China’s electricity for the first time.
Read more: Reuters →In August, India’s clean power stations overtook its fossil-fuel ones for the first time: 331.7 gigawatts against 302. Back in 2010 India had almost no solar at all. Now solar alone makes up a third of its power capacity.
Read more: Reuters →More energy from the Sun reaches the Earth in about an hour and a half than the whole world uses in a year.
Sun, Wind & WaveA solar panel now costs about 12 US cents for each watt of power it makes. In 2000 the same watt cost about six dollars, and in 1975 about a hundred. That is why solar is now the cheapest new power in much of the world.
Read more: Futurism →In the UK, small solar panels that simply plug into a socket went on sale for the first time. Hung on a balcony or a wall, they could save a household up to £100 a year.
Read more: Energy Saving Trust →Across Africa, about 100,000 solar panels are going up every day. The energy think tank Ember expects 17 gigawatts to be added this year, 45 per cent more than last year, in 36 of the continent’s 54 countries.
Read more: Ember →A gigawatt is a thousand million watts: very roughly, enough power for several hundred thousand homes at once. A large power station makes about one gigawatt.
Sun, Wind & WaveWhen Scotland’s first wind farm was taken down after its working life, 99.9 per cent of it was recycled or used again, most of it within 30 miles of the site. In Denmark, an old turbine blade now has a new job as a bicycle shelter.
Read more: ScottishPower →On 30 September California made it legal to fit small balcony solar panels, up to 1,200 watts, without asking the power company first (from January 2027), so people in flats can make their own electricity too.
Read more: pv magazine USA →In this summer’s heatwaves, Europe’s solar panels made about 17 per cent more power than usual, helping to meet the extra demand for cooling on the hottest days.
Read more: Grist →In Finland, the world’s largest sand battery stores summer heat in a great silo of sand, which holds heat for weeks. It can keep homes warm for nearly a month in summer and about a week in winter.
In Toronto, the new neighbourhood of Ookwemin Minising is being built with parks where the streets would be. Its half-mile car-free walk will be shaded by 400 trees, cooling the air and soaking up storm water.
Read more: Good Good Good →22 September is World Car-Free Day, when towns around the world close streets to traffic and open them to people. In Singapore, neighbourhoods take turns to go car-free until November.
Read more: Honeycombers →A roof planted with grass, flowers or moss. It keeps a building cool in summer and warm in winter, soaks up rain, and feeds bees and birds.
| ◑ | Last quarter | 4 September | 07:51 |
| ● | New moon | 11 September | 03:27 |
| ◐ | First quarter | 18 September | 20:44 |
| ○ | Full moon: the Harvest Moon | 26 September | 16:49 |
Depending on where you live, a phase may fall on the day before or after.
It rises soon after sunset several nights running, giving extra light for the harvest.
Nature AlmanacHarvests are gathered in. Leaves turn, fruit ripens and fungi appear.
Spring. Wattle blooms gold in Australia, wildflowers carpet the Cape and birds nest.
Clocks go back in Europe on 25 October; in the USA and Canada, on 1 November.
At China’s Mid-Autumn Festival, families gather to look at the full moon and share mooncakes. The old story tells of Chang’e, who drank an elixir and floated up to live on the moon, where a jade rabbit keeps her company.
Read more: China Highlights →In Japan, moon-viewing in autumn is called tsukimi. Where some see a face in the full moon, people in Japan see a rabbit pounding rice cakes.
Read more: Nippon.com →In Vietnam the Mid-Autumn Festival, Tết Trung Thu, belongs to children. They parade through the streets at night carrying glowing paper lanterns shaped like stars and carp.
Read more: Vietnam Tourism →Moon & MeadowIn Japan the week of the autumn equinox is Higan, a time for visiting family graves. Red spider lilies, higanbana, flower at just this time, so faithfully that they are named after it.
Read more: Nippon.com →At Chichén Itzá in Mexico, as the Sun sets around the equinoxes, light and shadow on the great pyramid’s steps make the shape of a serpent sliding down to the ground: Kukulcán, the feathered serpent. Thousands gather each year to watch it.
Read more: CyArk →On the night of Chuseok in Korea, women join hands and dance in a great circle under the full moon, singing as they turn. The dance, ganggangsullae, is so old that even the meaning of its name is a mystery.
Read more: UNESCO →Is there a saying, story or custom for September where you live? Write and tell us, and it may appear in a future issue.
For Rosh Hashanah, apples are dipped in honey and round loaves are baked, in hope of a sweet year ahead. Pomegranates are eaten too, their many seeds standing for a year full of good deeds.
Read more: The Old Farmer’s Almanac →For Chuseok, Korean families make songpyeon: little half-moon rice cakes, filled with sesame, beans or chestnut and steamed on a bed of pine needles, which gives them a fresh scent.
Read more: Korea’s Ministry of Culture →For the Mid-Autumn Festival, families in China share round mooncakes, often filled with lotus seed paste and a salted egg yolk like a little full moon. Round, because a round cake stands for a family gathered together.
Read more: China Highlights →Hearth & HarvestServes 4
Apples, pears, plums, blackberries, squash and the last of the sweetcorn.
Asparagus, broad beans, spring greens, and the first strawberries in warmer places.
Serve warm with yoghurt, cream or custard. Pears work just as well as apples, and you can swap the raisins for dates or dried apricots, or the honey for maple syrup. Children can help to mix and fill.
Root & BranchOn the equinox, mark where the Sun sets against a tree or roof. Look again in a month: how far has it moved? And remember, on the equinox day and night are about twelve hours each, from Oslo to Melbourne.
Root & BranchMark a stick’s midday shadow each week. Watch it move.
Root & BranchNine questions on this month’s fact sheet. The answers are upside down below.
Root & Branch takes one subject from the season and explains it from the roots up, so that over the year the fact sheets build into a picture of how the Earth works. Next month: how the Moon makes the tides.
September is clean-up month. World Cleanup Day, on 20 September, brings people out in almost every country, and in the UK and Northern Ireland the Marine Conservation Society’s Great British Beach Clean runs from 18 to 27 September. The litter you record helps change the law.
Read more: World Cleanup Day →Let one patch of garden grow long through autumn and winter. Seed heads feed birds, and hollow stems shelter insects until spring. A log pile in a quiet spot makes a winter home for beetles, frogs and other small creatures.
Read more: Royal Horticultural Society →Your sightings help scientists track the seasons. Try a recording app such as iNaturalist, or, in the UK, the Woodland Trust’s Nature’s Calendar.
This page belongs to you: the letters, sayings, sightings and photographs you send in, wherever you are. Each month we share the best of them here, so the newsletter grows from all corners of the world.
What does the equinox look like where you live? First leaves turning, or first blossom opening?
Which sections would you like more of, and which could go? Each issue will carry one extra article on what you ask for most.
Write to us at hello@plumtreepublishing.store. Say where you are, and if we may use your first name. Photographs are welcome too: tell us where and when you took them.
Kenya bongo plan: fundsforNGOs News, 30 Sep 2026. Thirty by thirty: Campaign for Nature and Together for the Ocean, 30x30 Global Assessment, 23 Sep 2026. Tilcayo tiger cat: Current Biology, via CBS News, 18 Sep 2026. China solar: Reuters. India clean power: Reuters, Aug 2026. Africa solar and panel prices: Ember, Financial Times. Wind farm recycling: goodgreen.news. Toronto: Good Good Good. Indonesia peat agency: Xinhua, 26 Sep 2026. Leyte trees: Daily Tribune, 30 Sep 2026. Marinette County: Resilience, 28 Sep 2026. Mexico turtles: Good Good Good. Europe heatwave solar: Grist. Sand battery: CNBC. Car-free Singapore: Honeycombers. River turtles: Mongabay. Plug-in solar: Energy Saving Trust. Balcony solar: Canary Media. Solar farms and wildlife: Good Good Good, EcoPortal. Emblehope Moor: The Guardian. 9/11 trees: One Tree Planted. Kākāpō: NZ Department of Conservation. Black bears: Good Good Good. High Seas Treaty: High Seas Alliance, 23 Sep 2026. Klamath salmon: Inside Climate News. Beach bags: Marine Conservation Society. Mushroom coffin: The Guardian, 7 Sep 2026. Spain’s marine areas: Oceana Europe. Blue Creek: Mongabay via Resilience, 29 Sep 2026. Tiger: Global Rewilding Alliance. Palmyra reefs: NPR / KPBS, 18–23 Sep 2026. Devil flower: PhytoKeys, via ScienceDaily, Sep 2026.
Soil: UN Food and Agriculture Organization (fao.org). Peat: UN Environment Programme. Fresh water: US Geological Survey (usgs.gov). Clean-up dates: United Nations and Marine Conservation Society. Rosh Hashanah: almanac.com. Chuseok: chinahighlights.com. Moon, Sun and planets: worked out from NASA JPL data.
iNaturalist (inaturalist.org) · Nature’s Calendar (naturescalendar.woodlandtrust.org.uk) · Marine Conservation Society (mcsuk.org) · World Cleanup Day (worldcleanupday.org)
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