Williamson's Weekly Nature Notes December 24 2008

I'M dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones we used to know but my wife is not. Not that one anyway; not the one with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and the everlastingly exquisite Vera-Ellen.

My wife says that if the film is run yet again she will leave home. Well, for the duration of the film anyway.

Instead, she is going to wander out into the woods and farmland around my home as shown in these two photographs I took some six years ago.

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She is hoping there will be a white Christmas out there for her.

I will find it difficult not to go with her and leave the American slush in the box. For one thing, snow brings with it a special clean taste in the nose, a concise distinctness of landscape structure and detail for the eye, and a primitive feeling of mind sharpening that is probably to do with the hunting instinct for the brain.

In snow I find myself scanning the sky very carefully for any bird flying, watching for indicators.

Lapwings flying south in a tight little wing high up may tell of heavy snow moving south a couple of hundred miles north of here. Snow will bring the fieldfares and redwings from the east, together with thousands of continental blackbirds that will upset the local blackbirds.

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Snow often brings huge flocks of wood pigeons in from Scandinavia too, flying well ahead of the storms. Chaffinches feel the pinch as well out there in Poland and will gather in hundreds around the pheasant feeders and sweet corn strips and even in the farmyards where cattle are housed.

All this activity is suddenly more than obvious when a white background of white hits the land. At dusk we would easily see the "foreign" woodcock coming out of the woods as they flight down to the meadows or tidal marshes to feed in softer ground.

Then there are all the footprints to see in the snow '“ far more rabbits than we thought and look '“ even a couple of hares which we thought had gone.

Here is the nightly prowl of the fox for all to see, and the roedeer which has come into the garden and nibbled the ivy next to the back door. What a graceful dance she has made there over the lawn by the look of her footprints '“ almost as lovely as the elfin Vera-Ellen.

Quick: back to the box to catch that will-o-the-wisp as well; but keep it to yourself. Happy Christmas.

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