MINUS EIGHT

It isn't just snow.
With the temperature down to minus eight, all the moisture caught on the tiny branches of trees solidifies as rime. Thus the oaks along the Seaton Ross lane appear to cross-dress. How you sex an oak tree is beyond me but there is something intrinsically masculine about these oaks normally. With their straight trunks and long main limbs, they stand as straight as ratings on parade and they look destined for the navy, as keel boards and planking, as indeed was once their use. Trees with which you would happily go into battle. Now, though, they are draped in lace, like giant cowslips. Their more sensitive side becomes visible, delineated in white. It is a rare pleasure to see it. It generally just isn't that cold.
At the double bend at Fosses Farm, Fieldfares gather, all along the north edge of the field. As they fly away from you with fast wing beats they look like puffins (which are surprisingly small birds). But you know they can't be. And their blueish heads, just a purple mist as they fly off, give them away. These will be winter visitors here, from very northern parts - Latvia, the Baltic, Russia and so on. It is difficult to understand why they are just in that tiny micro locality. Dare one say, they are there without rime or reason? It must I guess be some berry or other attracting them. It has its secrets. I once found an old tap there. But no water came from it. Whatever this secret, there they party around their discovered food source. Forty or fifty of them. All in their blue balaclavas. Russian emigres. Ex mariners, from an oak planked Baltic fleet?