One of my favourite ways to spend a midwinter afternoon is walking. Especially on the hill above my home, where the crisp air forces me to huddle deeper into my thick woollen scarf. It’s a good vantage point for seeing how the season has settled across the landscape: leafless woods, shallow puddles topped with thin layers of ice and hedgerows decorated with trailing tufts of traveller’s joy (also called old man’s beard). Seemingly empty fields offer up wintry gifts: roe deer, given away by their bright white rumps, grazing happily in the fading light. And I often flush out flocks of fieldfares, with flecked chests and iron-coloured heads, from the hawthorn. These thrushes travel from as far as Scandinavia to avoid biting temperatures, and their chuckling calls are a welcome…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2022