The Cold Snap Continues

There’s something about the woods in winter when there is snow on the ground, that I love. It seems more peaceful and quiet than normal, probably helped by being a ‘balmy’ –1 so nobody else seemed to share my enthusiasm for being out, but also there was no wind making it very silent but for some occasional bird sounds.  From a wildlife photographic point of view, it was not so good and even the enticement of the nuts and seeds I brought along wasn’t having the effect I was hoping for though I would normally stay a bit longer so the birds would get used to my presence, but I didn’t bring a ground sheet along to sit on so I was only able to stop in places for short periods of time before the damp cold forced the need to start moving again. I stopped off at a couple of places I knew Roe Deer would cross on the way back to their daytime hold ups and on one occasion got lucky as two deer came out into the clearing and shooting my shutter was enough to stop one of these inquisitive deer to look my way and buy me time to frame and focus my shot before it indifferently moved on back into the trees.

Despite the seemingly bareness of the woods, everywhere I looked there were tracks.  It’s not until you get a dusting of snow that you can really see the tail tell signs of just how much wildlife there really is living here though mostly nocturnal.  In many places there wasn’t a spot which didn’t have some type of animal track of some sort – mostly Foxes, Roe Deer and Rabbits – some obviously very recently, others older.

This has definitely been the coldest and most prolonged snowy period in a long time, certainly since I have lived in the North East of England.  Having this amount of snow seems to have changed the landscape, where normally you can see clearly defined parts of the wood or countryside, the snow has covered much of this – fences, hedges, boundaries have all been whitened out making it seem bigger and unrecognisable.  Looking at the same spot in the above image normally at just about any other time of year, you would not see more than a couple of feet as it would be high reeds in marshy water. Despite not seeing much wildlife if was a useful time out as I was able to find out what wildlife was around, where they normally travelled and their numbers, information I can put to good use during the rest of the year.