Retrospective

I'm craving the arrival of spring and longer evenings.  Today ended up as another corker of a day, and tonight we all congretated outside to watch the International Space Station.  I couldn't see it for love nor money, but Kee did.  Shame we missed Discovery the other night.

So having posted twice in two days I'm getting bolder and looking back at previous efforts.  Tempting as it is to search the summer photos and reminisce about long warm evenings, I've started by going over this last winter.

Wow.

Having moved in during the heatwave that was June 2010, winter was quite something.  Bless her, the house held up superbly and kept us (mostly) warm, while outside the waterbutt froze and swelled to such an extent that it almost keeled over.  It seems funny now looking at my bags of rock salt in the open fronted shed, yet it wasn't all that long ago.

When the sun shone and the snow glistened, this place came into its own.  The trees around the Fen particularly, on the days when the frost covered the branches in a delicate, perfect sprinkling of white.  I love this photo just because it does what it says on the tin (apologies Ronseal).  Our house will never win an architectural prize nor a beauty parade, but she wears her heart on her sleeve and is as honest a building as you'll find.

The boys made a snowman in the meadow with Grandad one Friday, and it proved a popular fixture for a few weeks.  I walked through the yard one morning and saw our little owl sat on its head.  You never have your camera with you when you need it.

Iinstead we used it as the focal point for a feeding station for the local wildlife.  The summer's Bramleys were well wrapped and stored in the piggery, but we spared a good wheelbarrow-full for the fieldfares, redwings and mistle thrushes.

Others seemed to appreciate the apples as well.  This young buck Roe deer became a regular visitor, and kept coming back loing after the snow had melted (even though the snowman survived the thaw).

He came back at the weekend, and I even saw him this morning, looking scruffy as his winter coat moults, but his velvety antlers are growing and he seems to have more of a strut about him. Unlike Red deer, Roes rut in the summer but breed in late winter (I think), so he's got about four months to get himself in shape for the summer.  I know how you feel old chap.

What I thought were weeds at the front of the house also turned out to be a valuable food source.  Sat in the dining room one day I heard twittering from under the window, and in my best SAS-style crawl managed to get to the window without showing my head until the last moment.  This goldfinch certainly seemed surprised to see me.

But the enduring memory of the winter was the regular visitor to our meadow, Athene noctua, known to most people as a little owl.  A right character, we first noticed him sat on molehills pre-dawn when we came down for breakfast and peered through the scope into the gloom.  Regular as clockwork he would disappear as soon as the night started to fade.  At the end of the short winter days you would hear him screeching from next door's oak tree, or even from the wires in the field at the back.  He seemed to take up residence in the dilapidated shed in next door's field, and would hop across the hedge and sit in the bottom of our apple tree.

Here is a bird who exudes attitude, who can out-stare you in a game of poker.  Grumpy, boisterous, flighty, motionless.  Everything wrapped up in one little package of feathery charisma.

We haven't seen him for weeks, not even heard him.  Maybe he's off looking for the ladies.  Let's hope he's back in the summer with a new family of littl'uns, sat on the fence post, hopping down for some worms then flitting back.

Farewell winter.

Welcome spring.