keeping track of things

The hard frost over the snow has let me wander off-piste so to speak, able to leave the straight and narrow and crunch my way over field and moor.

Up at the edge of the moor the sky was the colour that used to be associated with Mr Reckitt with wispy cirrus clouds but, on the northern horizon, there was a lowering bank of cumulus with snow in its folds.

I amused myself by trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to identify the animal and bird tracks in the snow. Some were easy, the lines of runes left by the local pheasantry, the neat prints of Mr Fox’s nocturnal searches and the dainty pockets in the snow of the roe deer.

Pheasant

It was obvious where deer had left one field and crossed the road into another, seeking shelter in the lea of a hedge, perhaps, so, fired with boy-scout enthusiasm, I followed on.

Feeling like a hunter I stalked my quarry although the illusion was somewhat dented when a fellow walker, spotting my camera said,
“There are some deer near the river. You might get some pictures”

I’m convinced I would have tracked them on my own!

With a bit of stealth, I did get within bow shot of one and felt that, if I were a Neolithic archer, I might have dined on venison even if I had had a bit of help on the way.

My unsuspecting prey

A better picture

Today is the winter solstice and my Neolithic antecedent would have been celebrating the sunrise. This is the true turning point of the year. Christmas, Hogmanay and all the other festivals are human constructs of religious, political or administrative origin. Gaia doesn’t know when they are but she does know when we have reached the nadir and things are looking up. The new year begins now.

Midwinter sunrise, December 21st 2009

Happy solstice!

Winter days

The Trees

Now is the start of the halcyon days, the spell of mild weather around the winter solstice when the fabled halcyon would build its floating nest.
Freed from the embarrassment of sticks, I have begun to wander further afield though still on the beaten track. The flocks of fieldfares and redwings are back, stripping the haws off the hedgerows.
As I made my way along an avenue of old trees that once graced the approach to a mansion house now long gone, the low winter sun was bathing them with watery rays.
My eye was caught by a bobbing jerky movement around the bole of a venerable field maple. A great spotted woodpecker was busy investigating the cracks in the bark. I wondered if it was the one we photographed being fledged in the nearby wood last year.

Last year

As I watched it, I became aware of the amount of activity in the trees. Chaffinches and goldfinches even a bullfinch, were competing with coal tits and blue tits for what ever they could find in the crevices and between the scales of the bark. A wren was prospecting around the great roots.

Catching the rays

On another tree, I was lucky enough to spot a nuthatch, moving head downwards on the upper trunk. We are just at the northern boundary of their range, so is this the result of climate change?
The little group of two maples and a surviving elm were alive with birds and yet, when I returned after about half an hour, the sun had sunk behind the ridge and, although there was still plenty daylight, the trees were no longer illuminated by sunlight and were empty and silent.
Every creature craves the sun especially in the depths of winter and you can appreciate why our forefathers lit bonfires to celebrate, or to defy, the darkness of the shortest day.

I am beginning to see those seemingly OTT displays of illuminations festooning some of the nearby houses in a different light, if you’ll pardon the pun. The lights, the coloured, flickering ropes, the electric icicles, the santas, the reindeer, the Christmas trees, even, in one garden, Snow White and her vertically challenged chums are all burning up the kilowatts
My eco-spirit, instead of condemning them for an extravagant waste of resources, has been thinking, well, they are just the old bale-fires in a new guise. A shout against the tyranny of darkness and cold, they do seem to cheer up the passer-by.
After all, what is driving them is just the sunlight of millions of years ago bottled up in fossil fuels and we can allow ourselves just a wee drop especially when the daily ration is so curtailed.

Roll on the Yuletide, the 21st when, at last, the days will slowly start to lengthen again and we will all feel better.