The snow has gone and the temperatures have shot up. In the woods the hazel is ready for spring.
Hazel hedges all possible bets, if you look closely at the photo you can see catkins with yellow pollen; catkins that have already shed their pollen and catkins tightly closed, waiting for real spring before doing anything foolish.
Snow may return or sunshine may linger and bees wake up. The hazel is ready for anything!
I turn my pasty face to the sun and wonder what the next month will bring!
Another 19 African countries have plans to join the programme – bringing ‘more than just hope’ to a continent that suffers the vast majority of malaria deaths
— Read on www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/jan/22/world-first-malaria-vaccine-rollout-begins-in-cameroon
The snow is still on the ground and frost on every twig, but eventually there will be meadow brown butterflies on the wild marjoram on my wilded front drive, so I was fascinated by this bit of evolution.
Study finds female chrysalises that develop at higher temperatures have fewer eyespots, making them harder to see in dry grass
— Read on www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/18/meadow-brown-butterflies-adapt-to-global-heating-by-developing-fewer-spots
New paper claims unless demand for resources is reduced, many other innovations are just a sticking plaster
— Read on www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/13/human-behavioural-crisis-at-root-of-climate-breakdown-say-scientists
It has snowed a lot over the last few days.
When it started, I opened the kitchen door and the silence flowed in. After the bluster and rattle of a warm front shaking the garden, the cold came flowing quietly behind. The door opened to thick silence as the flakes ate the noise of the very world.
After a few days of jig saws and filling up bird feeders, it was time to go out for a walk.
After struggling along the snow ploughed road we made it to an absolutely pristine flat path, where no one had walked. It is difficult to find a path that a dog walker has not trodden first, but this was it!
Along the edge there was a set of prints, rather like a small dog’s, but no human boots accompanied them. This was a fox, going on his own wild way on the path, blissfully alone in the snow.
He walked a surprisingly long way, veering off occasionally to dig under a willow root and then return to the white path.
Where alder trees grow along the stream, long ice crystals had formed on the twigs and then fallen onto the snow beneath, as thin and as sharp as needles. Brief slant sunshine made the snow glitter with iridescent lights.
The fox walked on. He went over the footbridge to the meadow. The footbridge is rotten and will not hold a lumpen human weight, but the fox trotted over, insouciant in the snow.
Across the path was a covered vole run. Under the snow a little rodent had burrowed along, safe from the buzzards and kestrels above and apparently unnoticed even by the fox. Maybe the vole had made its runway after the fox had passed by. I know that voles like thick snow as they can eat in perfect safety beneath its protection, but I had never seen its etherial tunnel before.
Snow had briefly made a hidden world of fox and vole visible.
Thank you!
The world can be wonderful in nice ways!
Take a minute to watch the film.
Photographer who noticed his items were mysteriously moving around caught an industrious rodent organising his workbench on camera
— Read on www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/07/mouse-secretly-filmed-tidying-mans-shed-every-night
Cathy's real country garden 
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