JON'S JOURNAL: Frost, footprints and a lagomorph mêlée

Stuff has got in the way over the last few days and I have not had a chance to write up my ongoing nature diary, so I hope that you will all forgive me that today's episode is particularly long and drawn out.

Last week we had snow for the first time in the winter. It was the first really cold day of the season, and I am afraid that the local animals and plants had - like the humans - got a little too complacent (golly I am being stupidly anthropomorphic here) and there was noticeable frost damage. Unfortunately two of my collection of succulents have been affected - I am going to wait and see what happens in the spring rather than to make hasty decisions about shoving all the plants into the conservatory now. After all as I mentioned the other day my mesembryanthemums die off every year in the frost, but come back renewed in the spring/summer.

The frog spawn at Kennerland appears to have been affected by the weather, but whether the cold was severe enough to kill it only time will tell.

Yesterday Prudence, Corinna and I went out to Huddisford for the first time since the snow, and as you can see there was still quite a lot of snow and ice about.

However the froggies have been active, because there is frogspawn in the ditch that we are following this year. It must be newly laid because it wasn't there last week. I have often wondered whether there is a specific reason for the early January spawn. Most years it is killed by the frost and the frogs lay again in march. I wonder whether this has an ecological purpose - as the dead spawn decays it adds nutrients to the little ecosystem of the ditch/pond. I don't know whether this is a hypothesis worth examining further or just one of my idle wonderings.

The little throughfare up the side of the bank above the Huddisford ditch is still being very regularly used. As you can see from the second photograph, there are at least three sets of different sized footprints here.


In one of the fields at the far point of our walk a little drama was taking place. Two magpies appeared to be mobbing a rook near the ground, and then - out of the middle of the mêlée hopped this little fellow. I thought at first that it was a hare, but it turned out to be a rabbit. I have no idea what actually took place in that particular episode of the zoological soap opera that is Huddisford, but Prudence was so enthralled by it all that she refused to get back in the car, and was chastised.