Icy Weather

Despite a persistent feeling that this would be wonderful weather for the middle of February, we cannot avoid what Nature chooses to throw at us. Three cheers for the drivers who brave the cold weather and dangerous roads to get food, fuel, post and other necessities to us – and the binmen who take away the detritus of our seasonal excess. Where would we be without them? Meanwhile out in the non-human world, the cold and frost mean tough times for our fellow creatures, but also wonder and beauty for those who care to look.
 
At Cabragh Wetlands the landscape is draped in frost, highlighting details and perspectives hidden for most of the year. Spiders’ webs glisten from fences and foliage, each utterly unique in design, different from every one of the billions of webs around the world. In the reedbeds the stalks of last summer’s growth are brought closer to collapse and decay by the penetration and weight of the freezing frost. The cycles of life and death continue inexorably. Nature is clearing out the old and unwanted, and preparing for the new and vigorous growth of next spring.
 
Small creatures can suffer terribly at times like this. As the ground and water froze last week, so a curlew abandoned the safety of the marshland meadows to search for food in, of all places, the mud and slush which cars had heaped in ridges along the road to Holycross. With its elegantly streamlined long, downward curling beak, the curlew must have been pretty desperate to venture to such a public, dangerous place, and the poor thing looked rather pathetic as it forlornly penetrated the soft material before inevitably bashing into the unyielding tarmac beneath. This once common bird of the moors, marshes and fields is now officially classified as endangered, placed on the Red List and carefully monitored. They will be glad of a thaw, and we hope enough survive winter to breed productively in the spring.
 
The ponds are mostly covered in ice, with lines of footprints across the surface giving more evidence of the wealth of wildlife about. A few corners are ice-free so ducks and other birds can drink and clean their feathers; one author suggested that birds are more likely to die of thirst than hunger in very cold weather. They can always find something in the hedges and ditches to nibble on, especially this early in the winter, but if all sources of water are rock-hard, like the curlew pecking at the tarmac, they will be in real danger. My laziness has produced an added bonus this autumn. Hundreds of windfall apples were left lying where they fell, waiting to be raked up and composted. Now they are a wonderful source of food for the starlings, rooks and crows.
 
The sturdy pony tethered near the Cabragh Centre has done invaluable work eating down excess vegetation, manuring the ground, creating crevices with its hooves for other creatures to shelter in and opening up the tightly packed thatch of grass and weeds at the base of an overgrown fence, allowing light and space for new growth next year. In bad weather even the least becoming food source can be a lifeline for something.
 
Do not forget the CAVA (Community and Voluntary Association) meeting at Cabragh at 8.00 this Thursday (9th December).