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Sub-zero on Scout Scar

18/3/2018

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PictureLooking south to Morecambe Bay
 The penultimate day of winter. Temperatures sub-zero and significant wind-chill.  If  Scout Scar landscapes look bleak and forbidding, that's how the morning  felt. In an exhilarating way. Looked beautiful, felt brutal. 
On the escarpment, the full force of the wind struck.  The few hardy runners are masked, as I am.  We feel a certain bravado for venturing into the teeth of the wind.

Landscape images are hasty.  It's far too cold to linger bare-fingered, too wild to hold steady and compose an image. To my eyes, the light is subtle and suggestive and I'm drawn to a certain softness over Morecambe Bay that my images cannot reach. There is sunlight, there are glimpses of blue.  There are a few folk abroad, although it's Sunday morning so we're eager to be outdoors.  Blizzards yesterday. Today,  the remnants.  A pummelling up on Scout Scar escarpment.  Hereabouts, winter has been intermittent-  with bursts of intense cold.  Interspersed with mud.  Tomorrow, spring, says Tomasz Shafernaker.   
On Sunday morning the sun rose on sheets of ice over pavements.  It thawed fast and the sun tempted me forth.
The curlew's song is a harbinger of spring, says this morning's Tweet of the Day. Not a chance of skylark or curlew on Scout Scar on 18 March.  So, what will tomorrow bring?
Blackbird: a puritan with a banana in his mouth, says J A Baker.  I dithered: should I venture forth, again, into sub-zero and wind chill? Sheet ice deterred me. So I photographed a resident blackbird, thinking of the admirable JA Baker.  I feed the blackbird on apple and pear cores, which he scoffs.  And there in that final image he does appear to be swallowing a banana whole, peel and all.  Even the discolouration on his beak looks banana.  It's a fun image because you don't expect to catch a puritan in greedy gulping.
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    Jan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books.)

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