And Winter Came

And loudly does the song thrush sing of happy new years to come, before the mistle thrush atop the lime tree, rattles in the next arriving storm. January and the New Year have barely dawned with hardly enough frost to whiten shed roofs and car windscreens when, before you could take the time to breath in the cold scent of it, all was gone with the dark cloud of rainy days and wet, wet nights, winds that howled and growled and taunted trees, tearing off the remains of the past year’s leaves, loose bark and lichen encrusted branches, to lay littered across lanes and lawns alike. All thoughts of brisk winter walks abandoned as the persistent downpours turn the chalk of Downland tracks to thick gloopy, slimy, silver mud and fill lane side ditches to overspill until country roads become impassable floods that reflect the overcast troublesome sky and the moody purple slumbering hills. Rivers burst their banks and surrounding meadows become vast lakes dissected by hedgerows and rows of trees, an ocean decorated by flocks of white gulls riding the waves like racing yachts. Sheep are moved to higher, dryer pasture as the winterbourne chalk streams, that cross their valley meadows, split and spread into a landscape of tributaries across the landscape. Once or twice there has been blue sky and sun between downpours with the sparkle of raindrops hanging upon branches, arches of multicoloured rainbows. Buzzards sit hunched and damp upon fence posts or paddle in the wet grass in search of worms whilst the sudden sun glances sharply off the white wing of a wandering Egret hoping for an insect feast around an abandoned manure heap cleaned from a cattle barn. Teatime brings a sudden glimpse of a golden strip, a whisp of yellow light atop the humped backbone of the south western Downs before the dark pewter clouds descend upon it once more and send the sun slipping and sliding into bed ready for another soaking, windblown night. Sometimes the Tawny Owl gives a mournful call and even though the full January Wolf moon is hidden from sight the wet dog fox still barks.

Slowly, tentatively, the daylight returns, each morning, despite grey damp dawns the birdsong builds with increasing hope of a distant spring, by the end of the month we will have gained approximately 80 minutes of daylight since the Winter Solstice night. In every direction robins begin to greet the day, the song thrush filling the damp air with his pure loud notes as the jackdaws clatter and chatter overhead. Outside the house the hedge is filled with sparrows, dunnock and bluetit join in and along the lane during a brief bright spell the Great Spotted woodpecker makes his first drum solo of the year and Hazel catkins stretch and grow lemon yellow in the winter sun, but the Wren Druid bird is strangely quiet and unlike the previous few years snowdrops are slow to show themselves, one wonders what they may know. And after dark as still the rain falls, listen carefully and you may just hear the song of a hopeful Robin as he sings by lamplight, cheering the wet wintery night.

Suddenly mid-month the real winter arrives. Whilst all around floods still stand and the hills still spill their accumulation of stormwater, in temporary rivers, cutting channels through banks and plough, bypassing uncleared ditches and rushing across roads to further swell the floods and standing water, overnight the very air freezes, temperatures dropping suddenly, harshly.

And Winter comes. Arriving like a gliding white swan, touching everything with white; white trees, white hedgerows, white grass, all is swept with bright white sparkling frost, becoming stiff and hard, harder still, sharp as glass, mirror smooth with ice that coats the flooded world, shockingly harsh, it grows in intensity, the gliding white swan rapidly transforming into the wicked Ice Queen who, with every breath, touches everything with flashing diamond-hard whiteness. The hopeful birds are silenced, the catkins stiffened, even the Wolf Moon comes to resemble a thin scythe shaped, sharply etched crescent of brilliant ice upon a dark velvet cloth of scattered diamond chips. The ground is solid, Badgers, driven further afield in search of food, they bicker and argue leaving grass verges and banks along residential roads littered with clumsily dug and scratched out holes, black and white birds, corvids and gulls, join steaming cattle, huddled around the trailers of feed hauled in by tractors rumbling across the iron hard mud at field gateways. A fallen branch lays stranded, seeming abandoned, lost, upon the frozen surface of the pond beneath an ancient oak, reeds stand stiff and tall.

Night after night, frost upon frost, until the very air sparkles as you walk through it and trees and hedgerows are so thick with ice crystals that it seems as though they are artificial, like those ‘fake snow’ covered Christmas trees on sale in supermarkets back in the festive season. A week, maybe two, later, the sun slowly begins to pink the dawn sky once more, breathing upon the Ice Queen’s world and softly, gently, oh so slowly, melting all, including the sharp thin moon, into shining liquid drops and drips and the Song Thrush begins to raise his voice in song again. The birds know the month is nearly gone, the ice has gone, for now at least, and on cue Dunnock sing, blue tit and great tit join them and goldfinch twitter, caught in sunlight atop the budding beech tree. Hazel catkins thaw, hanging free and full of lemon pollen once more, snowdrops begin to raise their heads and after a bright scarlet dusk a new moon is born to the uplifting cry of the Tawny Owl’s new wife.

Amongst the snowdrop buds, upon a moss and lichen studded fallen branch, the Wren Druid bird spreads its wings, fans its tail, quivering, head aloft, lets rip a rising trill of expanding, floating, cascading notes.

The snowdrops and the birds do know.

Words and pictures by Artist and Druid © 2023 unless otherwise indicated.