Freezing Fog

Was beating on a driven game shoot over the weekend. The countryside was clenched in the iron grip of a long freeze and I felt sorry for many of the birds and creatures that came at us out of the mist.

With game such as Woodcock, Duck and Snipe off the shoot list thanks to the longstanding period of hard frost, I watched them curl like apparitions into the great greyness and wondered for the umpteenth time how on earth they survive conditions like this.

The answer, I suppose, is that many of them don't. Woodcock and snipe in particular rely on soft ground to forage for their favourite worms and inveterbrates, and when they are not available for long periods, many birds perish.

The collective name for a flock of snipe is Wisp - a wonderfully evocative, melancholic name, ideally suited to the half a dozen or so birds I saw vanish on a cold, starkly beautiful day.