Winter wonderland

As I write the snow is falling thick and fast cloaking the whole region in a white shroud,
I come from an age when snow was expected as soon as October ended and we often had white Easters never mind Christmas’. This day and age we get a couple of inches and the world stops. Well it may stop for human kind but for the rest of the animal kingdom the day to day struggles of life continue apace.

One of the beauties of this weather is that it allows you to witness just what lives on your doorstep because a covering of snow tells no lies. Getting out and about may be a little more difficult but making that extra effort can be really worthwhile telling the storey of a whole new world that went on the night before.

That fox slinked around the bins and under the bird feeding station or the little fella’s that don’t live in your garden under the compost bin, rabbits and hares all leave their tell tale tracks in the snow of where they have been and what they have been up to. Specks of blood and a few scattered feathers beneath a holly bush tell where a tawny owl stole a sleeping blackbird from its roost during the night.

The snow never lies and often shows some huge surprises that you would never consider unless you saw the evidence. Several years ago I was on the Wansbeck, just outside of Morpeth when I came across some unmistakable tracks in the snow leading into a nearby copse. An otter was looking for somewhere to sleep I thought, so I followed them through the copse and over the field to some rabbit warrens. Feeding on rabbits I thought, nothing new there when times are hard, needs must. Nope, closing in on the warrens there was obviously a great commotion in the snow with many tracks and disturbed snow.

Pondering the situation it became evident what had happened. Otters have long been thought of as solitary creatures but when you have studied them for as long as I have you know this is not the case. But what the tracks in the snow were about to unfold even I was surprised.

It was clear from the number tracks that there were more than one otter about so I started to put together the storey. Otter one had left the river and headed in land, judging by the size of the tracks he was a probably a male. On entering the area of gorse and rabbit holes he was met by what could only be described as a torrent of otters at least three different individuals with much smaller track sizes, youngsters? Then followed much running and harrying, rolling and jumping about obviously they were pleased to see each other.

Further tracks appeared from the direction of the river of a fifth otter, not quite as big as the first but bigger than the others (female), surely this is not meant to happen and neither was the next series of events.

Having watched Walt Disney as a kid and been enthralled by tobogganing otters I have in later life been slightly sceptical of wild creatures’ propensity to ‘play’. What the snow told that day was amazing all five otters were involved in a series of assault courses around two small hillocks where everyone was running to the top of the hill and then sliding down in pure enjoyment, the thrill of life. Oh to have been a snowflake that night to have witnessed this event. They must have ran their selves ragged as there were clear otter body imprints in the snow where they had collapsed with exhaustion, like snow angels they lay sprawled about. I have never seen the like of it before truly amazing.

I left the scene and the steam rising from the hole entrances as the occupants hopefully slept through my intrusion into their private world with a feeling of awe and wonder, had they really been playing?

On the way back I new that with out the snow nobody would have been aware of that sort of activity, not even Walt Disney was that good.