The bitter chill of the second week in December was followed in the New Year by days and days of mild wet weather. Mild enough for the grass to remain green, for hardy annuals such as groundsel to continue flowering, and even for new fungi to sprout from logs and stumps. On one such stump we found hundreds of hibernating ladybirds all huddled together, not the familiar red ones, but tiny and yellow with multiple black spots. Unlike the aphid-feeding ladybirds, these feed on mildew. If you spot a brown shiny mushroom growing on wood, its likely to be the velvet shank, also known as winter fungus. Apparently, the Chinese enjoy them stir-fried.
One mild night just before Christmas I was driving over the hill on the Froxfield road and was surprised to see dozens of pale moths fluttering in the headlight beam – more than I saw all summer. They were probably Winter Moths, and they would be males since the female moth is wingless. They say the moths have anti-freeze in their veins, but their real secret seems to be very low body mass so that they don’t have to beat their wings very hard. Their caterpillars are an important food-source for tits when the birds are feeding their young in the spring.
On one of the rare clear nights, I was gazing up at the winter stars, and, as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I spotted the faint outline of a constellation I had never seen before: Camelopardalis, the giraffe. It circles the Pole Star, almost joined to it by the head, and I could make out its long neck and two slender legs. The giraffe sits in an area of the sky which seems almost a blank except on very clear nights. Close by is another large but faint constellation, the Lynx, so-called because they say you need the eyes of a cat to see it. Over much of England I doubt you could see the giraffe or the lynx in the light-polluted night sky. We are lucky.
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