Winter Thrushes

It’s another strange winter. Amazingly we’ve had no frost yet and the winter thrushes have not arrived in the village. The last two winters were bitterly cold, breaking all records; this one may do the same, but it’s the unbelievably warm weather that’s entering the record books. Gone is the myth that a bumper harvest of berries signals a cold winter; the hedgerows are dripping and the few Blackbirds that are around make little impression on the harvest.

We need frost; it cleanses the soil and resets the biological clock. The grass was still growing in the garden at the beginning of December and some shrubs have still to loose their leaves. Maybe winter will arrive eventually along with the Redwings and Fieldfares, but there’s every chance we could miss it altogether this year, which would probably please the climate change deniers. What they fail to accept is that the models predict big swings in weather and we’re getting just this; some very cold winters, some warm and wet and not so nice summers. Climate change is here, but the world seems not to want to do much about it.