Reading the signs

Two o’clock may not seem late to start a walk, but at mid winter in Scotland the afternoons are short. I know the sun has passed its zenith, but feel the need to experience the blue sky and sunshine before they fade.

After a month of snow and freezing conditions, a slow thaw has reduced the white cover to a few inches in depth. Yesterday the snow was horribly wet, soon soaking my old boots, but an overnight freeze means crisper underfoot conditions today.

I head for one of my favourite wooded knolls, topped by spreading oaks and flanked with coppiced hazel and juniper. Less snow settles under trees than in the open, and during the thaw their dripping branches has splattered that thin layer so that it has completely disappeared in places.

Here I find some welcome colour to relieve the monochrome world of fog-shrouded snow that I have walked in for two days. Vivid green moss covers the ground and base of the trunks, while a filigree of orange twigs reach into the blue sky.

Repeated falls of thick snow have battered the bracken into submission, making it easier to cross the open ground that is less shaded by trees. These snow fields are untouched by human footprint, but criss-crossed with animal tracks. 

The delicate cleft print of roe deer, two of which bound off through the trees, are accompanied by the larger marks of red deer. Both have left their characteristic droppings in the snow. So have the rabbits, whose tracks are most numerous among the hazel where they have compacted snow at the entrance to their burrows. Nearby, I spot the squirming tunnels that voles have made under the snow. With its melting they are once again exposed to the fox, whose paw pads (see below) describe long lines of travel through the wood.

Lower down I also find the distinctive prints of another species, alien to Britain, that has found a wild home in this corner of Scotland. I dare not mention it’s name in case Scottish Natural Heritage decide to remove it, as they are currently doing with the Tay beavers, but seeing it has enlivened previous walks in this wood. Unlike the beaver, which is a native species that was exterminated by man in medieval times, this animal never lived here. However, it seems to have fitted comfortably into this unfamiliar habitat, without apparently affecting it.

The sun has set by the time I walk back across the fields. In the long, slow dusk glorious colours tinge the sky. I pause on an open hillock to take in the whole horizon: pink and grey to the north-east, red and gold in the south-west, with an infinite range of shades in between.

It has grown very still. No wind. Cold, but not bitter. In that quiet moment between day and night a lone red kite flaps across the fading red sky.

And then the jackdaws and rooks come home. A cloud of them speckle the sky then turn and wheel noisily overhead as further droves of black birds arrive. Growing in numbers they career back and forth between potential roost sites. Hundreds, maybe thousands, make a final dance across the mushroom sky.

I wish I understood their language. But, for now, I’m happy simply to have seen the spectacle and heard their daily discourse.