January’s cover of Countryman featured a gorgeous photo of a dormouse which had all those wildlife lovers in our readership responding with a resounding ‘aaawww’. The dormouse is certainly a cutie but unfortunately endangered, so I was pleased to learn this week of a new wood being created in the Yorkshire Dales to aid their recovery and development. A batch of 35 dormice (officially considered extinct here) were released last summer in a wood near the River Ure at Aysgarth (pictured) where they are doing well. Now local farmer Arthur Lambert has given up another four acres of new woodland nearby to aid their development. Nearly £3,000 from the English Woodland Grant Scheme will support the expansion of the dormouse’s domain, mainly with hazel trees, but also with other species like ash, oak and cherry.

They’re going to kill off some of the elderly residents in my village. No, it’s not the National Park’s latest idea to free up some affordable homes by culling our pensioners. Some of the oldest trees in the churchyard have unfortunately become dangerous and are beyond help. It’s sad when this happens but if ever there was evidence of mortality it is here in the churchyard! The oldest tree amongst the graves is also my favourite – a sweet chestnut which is more than 250 years old. Happily, this one has been spared the axe so I’ll still be able to sit quietly nearby and watch tree creepers flit busily up and down its gnarled trunk and low-slung branches and delight  in its autumn colours. My photo shows part of the churchyard as it was last October. Let me know about your favourite churchyard or tree.

The cat gave me a ‘we’re not friends any more’ look as I let him in on Sunday morning. It had reached -7C at the back of the house where he had spent the night. Now, in the front garden where a weak sun struggled to warm things up, two sparrows were pecking away at some (frozen) food that I’d put out the previous afternoon. Despite the frost I was determined to get out of the house – and I was glad I did. The river was low – the calm before the storm you might say, with miles and miles of snow in the Dales awaiting a thaw. When it comes, the stretch of the Ribble (above), with its fine ancient packhorse bridge, will be fast and frothing, and the falls a few yards downstream will be thunderous and exciting. Today it was so quiet I could hear the ice cracking at the water’s edge as it warmed and shifted with the flow. Icicles, some more than two feet long, hung from the limestone banking by the falls.  Odd clumps of snow dropped off  tree branches which stretch across one part of the river and plopped into the pool by the falls. In summer and autumn the branches meet up with their partners across the river near here to create a dreamy scene. Today might lack colour and life but as I crunched my way along where I imagined the path to be, nature was still putting on a fine show.

While browsing through some of my old photos the other day I came across this lovely display of snowdrops taken during the first week of February in 2005. It prompted me to head back to that same spot over the weekend to see whether this sharper winter had made any difference to the snowdrops’ timetable. Sure enough, they were barely peaking through. A local chap told me that this year was more like it used to be in this part of the Yorkshire Dales. With snow and icy winds gripping most of the country today perhaps the little flowers made the right decision. Are snowdrops showing elsewhere?