He’s at it again. That Jack Frost has turned another cold night into a glittery masterpiece on the bedroom window.
It’s a marvellously light touch, a sparkle of abstract patterns unless you have the kind of imagination that conjures fairies and goblins out of thin air. Today’s work is maybe more Maurice Sendak than Quentin Blake: icy fingers, spindly legs in a weird and wonderful woodland with a suggestion of wild creatures.
This is proper winter weather, the kind of prolonged chill we haven’t had for some years. I’ve seen bemused complaints about snow and ice on social media in that ‘well, what are you going to do about it’ peevish tone that tweets are often made of, provoking a not unreasonable response, ‘It’s winter, it’s Scotland, get used to it.’
Except of course that we have grown unaccustomed to proper winter. Even us oldies who remember …
Getting dressed in bed
…when we had a pretty chilly childhood November to March in Northern Ireland. We rented a draughty house backing on to a railway line, snuggled to sleep under heavy blankets, comforted by the sound of freight trains in the night, greeted in the still dark morning by chill lino beneath bare feet. Longing to stay warm I developed a way of getting dressed in bed, not easy on school days. But there was the treat of Jack Frost on the sub zero bathroom window.
Now I’m standing admiring his latest creations in a cottage wrapped with external insulation, doing its best to keep us warm even when temperatures drop below minus 5. Not unlike snuggling under the heavy blankets of yesteryear, there’s no chilly lino but there comes a time when cold air leaks in.
And cold reality. Even as I’m enjoying a snapshot of winters past there’s Storm Gorettie waging a Trump-like attack on the Scilly Isles and UK southwest. But lets enjoy an old school moment or two? Cold temperatures used to be the norm in Northern Hemisphere winters.
I try to catch some of the magic crystals with my mobile but it’s not quite up to the task. Sunlight and ice make quite a challenge for the smart lens. I’m no artist but I think some smart work with pencils or pastels and paper could do a better job.
Through the window it’s good to see blackbirds and robins making a hearty breakfast of mealworms and seeds we’ve scattered among the leaf litter. Ground feeding birds need help. Apples are also a daily feast for blackbirds (I’m glad to find a good use for the last of the 2025 harvest, now looking a little tired) but there’s always competition.
Feed the birds
Magpies pluck crab apples off a tree in the orchard, and I’m watching one with an impressive beak full hopping beneath the hedge. I have a soft spot for these handsome bright birds but they seem to like the same food that blackbirds depend on and I noticed that whole apples were disappearing faster than they should from one blackbird’s favourite spot. The yellow beak clearly wasn’t getting much of a look in.
There should be plenty to go round without magpies bullying the blackbirds and it looks as if they have been deterred by the tip I found online: a CD hanging from a low branch where blackbirds forage seems to be doing the trick: “Magpies don’t like reflecting light.” says The Field, “So hanging CDs or plastic bottles half-full of water can be an effective way to keep them away. (And useful recycling for CDs you no longer need.)”
And how are the humans doing? A walk round the garden produces sudden treats in frosted seed heads, ice-tinted leaves, tracks in the snow, On the coldest days we light fires early so we keep warm by the effort of keeping warm: filling the log store, foraging (like the birds) for backup supplies from storm-felled timber in the sitka plantation.
All the time keeping an eye on the windows. Even after the ice etchings have melted there’s the activity around feeders hanging from birch trees. Snowprints record blackbirds and squirrels. On the pond ‘our’ six swans and maybe 30 ducks are learning to skate, or at least how to walk on ice. Welcome to winter?
I read today’s news about Storm Goretti with some humility. My childhood memories of ‘proper winter’ are not at all the same as today’s extreme weather events caused by climate change.
In the early 6os when I was snuggling against the cold beneath heavy blankets only a few scientists were studying the atmospheric changes being caused by human behaviour (although the greenhouse effect had been identified as long ago as the early 19th century).
I first became aware of the significance of climate change during the late 1980s/early 1990s when I was lucky enough to be working as a freelance contributor to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
We know much more now. Yet still we don’t act. No wonder the magic of frost on glass brings a sense of wonder. We could turn that wonder into positive action?