When frost halts nature for a tight embrace, the landscape lays edged into a mirror of icy water and frozen tears, reflecting a cold, cobalt sky, when silver furrows trace rippled tree-bark and dawn casts empty seed-head as sculptures across our fields, the owls sweep low to find their prey.

Once again, I can see them dancing in the wind.

Snow had lain deep for days in January and hard winds scattered the owls I used to watch for over a year. I kept notes in my massive, leather-clad volume on each of them, about where they live and their habits, but none of these cherished acquaintances seemed to have remained where I knew them to roost. Once the sun came back and the winds stilled I spent days hoping to find them but not a sign. As before, it was the frost that brought them back out.

A small white flash between branches or and topping a fence post, a flicker of light on an ivory wing, a shadow passing over the hedge many fields down and a pellet spat out of a tree all point the way. You see them circle in a distance then trace their patterns back to barn and tree until you know their roost. Then you wait and slowly, ever so slowly, find a vantage point which doesn’t disturb them.