The somewhat less pleasurable (for most) counterpoint to signs of spring in February.

Lovely warm evening here in London tonight, but I noticed two things: it’s already too dark to read outside at 8.30, and the Swallows have gone. That swooping and chirruping across the evening sky that says high summer has disappeared.

I don’t think they’ve migrated yet, but they probably don’t need to fly around cavorting with the opposite sex anymore.

Tomato plants are starting to ease off on the production levels too.

My hanging baskets are at their very best!  

Driving to work in the morning with headlights on!

Still being up when the bats come out at twighlight!

Yep, me too - grim   At least I'll still arrive at  work in the light for a few weeks more  !

Another (more positive)  sign of the year rolling on is I've just had my first ripe autumn fruiting raspberries

Always a sad thing but at least we had a great summer and many high temperatures,  Now I like to see further higher temps as much as possible to mid Sept.  Otherwise I always like to see many over 20C days as long as possible to mid October to buy time and reduce the Autumnal weather.  

To me, just the fact that both the Scottish and English domestic football seasons are now fully underway shows us nicely, that the summer is coming to an end as this now brings us into our sporting diet which will take us through the winter rather than us having to rely on other sporting events such as Wimbledon and the Open Golf Championship for our sporting fix.

Here in Scotland, our children come off on their summer school holidays much earlier than their English counterparts but the fact that the school summer holidays here in Scotland are now over, also tells us nicely that our summer is coming to an end.

Another sign of that is the fact that it is now already just about pitch black here by 9pm whereas at around the time of the summer solstice, the Sun wasn't even setting until around 10pm with twilight then carrying on all the way through the night. That all-night twilight officially ends IMBY on around 9 August every year (that is when the Sun returns to being more than 18° below the horizon when it is at its furthest point below the horizon in the middle of the night) and when that happens, that in itself tells us that our summer will soon be coming to an end especially since as I write, we now have just over a month to go until the Autumn Equinox, so it is already getting darker at nights really quickly now.

Um... the swallows won't be leaving for another fortnight and will need to swoop to fill themselves up for the marathon they face.

The daylight at 8.30 will still beat the south of Spain for another month.

Tomatoes will be peaking through early September.

So not so glum.

Getting up later as not  light in the mornings now. The lights in the evening are being turned on around 20:30. With the cloud an fog of late summer is gone....

The change in light that (for me) becomes discernible around the 12th August. The lengthening shadows. The frequency of dew-points of 17c + in a tropical maritime airmass. 

Still seeing occasional swallows here but definitely not as many as earlier in summer, pretty typical I suppose. At the very least this year's young don't leave until September.

My aunt gave me a blackberry and apple pie yesterday, so that's a positive sign of summer nearing its end. Yum yum yum. 

Agree with this. As August wears on, those evening twilights become far more lingering and looming. Warm and humid nights become much more frequent as well towards Summer's end. 

Here's one I picked on Monday. Wrt your other points I agree. Nights pulling in rapidly and swallows AWOL regardless of whether they are still in the UK or not. 

"Beef monster" tomato picked today and weighing in at 908g. Grown outside in #Berkhamsted, Herts. #summer2018 pic.twitter.com/8w0hNannf9

— TheWeatherOutlook (@TWOweather) August 20, 2018

Neither evident this year. It has been so dull, sunless and dismal it feels like full blown autumn already.

Signs that summer is drawing to an end?

The kids breaking up for their summer holidays.

That seems to be nothing new in Aberdeen, Richard.

My famed west-facing hobby room taking on a warm orange glow at sunset time as the setting sun shines directly inside, and then my overhead lamp is switched on by the time EastEnders come on.  However, I'll still be wearing shorts and T shirt indoors until well into November anyway.

The wasps turning into w*nkers with wings!

As an adult, for the past 10 years, seeing an influx of teachers at work, as well as the kids coming in to pick up their results. The kids go back at the end of August these days, the schools round here now generally shaving a week off the summer in exchange for an extra week in October.

Darkness when I get up.

A gentle warmth from the sun rather than fiery, searing heat. (Yes, the "quality of the heat" that made certain people crack up on the MOD earlier in the summer!)

Blackberries! (Albeit they came out in July at the wolf centre...)

A darkening, dulling of the green foliage.

Someone posts “Winter is over”!  

The sky has a yellowish hue that deepens towards evening.

The shadows stretch across the ground even at midday.

Christmas cards appear in the shops🙄

This morning, a few house martins were gathering under the gable end of the house next door, where a telephone line goes in. We haven't seen many here during the summer, so that was interesting in itself.

Within minutes, more and more arrived until there were scores fighting for a place on the line! Amazing noise from them all. They've all gone en masse, so that's summer over, then.