1 - As The Day Lengthens

A Country Year - As The Day Lengthens.

January 1st to January 18th

By the 18th of January hours of daylight will have increased by around forty-five minutes, since the winter solstice, but there is an old saying - As the day lengthens, so the cold strengthens....

From the Downham Market Gazette Clarke (1905) - Depressing as the dreary days of winter sometimes are, it is certain that the bare brown fields, leafless hedgerows and trees, and the tawny heaths, cause us to appreciate spring in a degree that would be impossible were the country evergreen.

From The Book of the Seasons by William Howitt (1836) - January. This is the month of abundant snows and all intensity of frost. Yet winter, even its severest forms, brings so many scenes and circumstances with it to interest the heart of the lover of Nature and of his fellow-creatures, that it never ceases to be a subject of delightful observation; and monotonous as it is frequently called, the very variety of the weather itself presents an almost endless source of novelty and beauty.

There is first what is called a great storm. Frost, - keen, biting frost, is in the ground, and in the air, a bitter, scythe-edged, perforating wind from the north; or, worse, the north-east, sweeps the descending snow along, whirling it from the open fields, and driving it against whatever opposes its course. Against every house, rock, or bank, the snow accumulates. It curls over the top of walls and hedges in fantastic wildness, forming often the most perfect curves, resembling the scrolls of Ionic capitals, and showing beneath romantic caves and canopies. Hollow lanes, pits, and bogs now become traps for unwary travellers; the snow filling them up, and levelling all to one deceitful plain. It is a dismal time for the traversers of wide and open heaths, and one of toil and danger to the shepherd.

This month more than all others shows us the continued frost - A frost that, day and day, and week after week, makes a steady abode with us, till the beaten roads become as dusty as the summer. It every day penetrates deeper into the earth, and farther into our houses; almost verifying the common saying, "January will freeze the pot upon the fire." Our windows in the morning are covered with fine opaque frost-work, resembling the leaves and branches of forest-trees, and the water is frozen in the ewer. Sometimes, too, rain freezing as it falls, or a sudden thaw, and as sudden a re-freezing, covers the whole ground with a sheet of the most glassy ice.

But of all the phenomena of winter, none equals in beauty the hoar frost. A dense haze most commonly sets in over night, which has vanished the next morning, and left a clear atmosphere, and a lofty arch of sky of the deepest and most diaphanous blue, beaming above a scene of enchanting beauty. Every tree, bush, twig, and blade of grass, from thee utmost nakedness has put on a pure and feathery garniture, which appears the work of enchantment, and has all the air and romantic novelty of a fairy-land. Silence and purity are thrown over the earth as a mantle. The hedges are clothed in a snowy foliage, thick as a summer array. The woods are filled with a silent splendour; the dark boles here and there contrasting strongly with the white and sparkling drapery of the bough above, amongst which the wandering birds fly, scattering the rime around them in showy showers. There is not a thicket but has assumed a momentary aspect of strange loveliness; and the mind is more affected by it from its suddenness of creation, and the consciousness of its speedy departure: for hoar-frosts seldom continue three days.

A Country Year - As The Day Lengthens.

January 1st to January 18th

From the Downham Market Gazette W. G. Clarke (1905) - January is preceded by the dull days of November and December, but even if it be followed by similar depressing periods, with the lengthening days the outlook seems more cheerful.

While decidedly one of the coldest months of the year the very cold brings compensations in its train. What, for instance, is more beautiful than some of the effects of frost? To frozen stream and lake and ground almost as hard as iron, we have become accustomed, but days of hoar-frost are never sufficiently common for their wonderous beauties to be vulgarised by familiarity. Twigs and blades of grass are adorned with innumerable pearls, and windows covered with fantastic floral decorations, so wonderful as to be almost inconceivable. Frost has also a utilitarian was well as an artistic side. It is a decided friend of the farmer. Moisture in the clods of ploughed fields become frozen and when the thaw comes the expansion breaks them into numerous fragments, thus preparing the soil for the spring sowings.

Should the weather be extremely cold, birds and beasts that in the breeding season are so shy as to be almost unapproachable, come into close contact with man, fear of nature being more powerful than the fear of humanity.

Foxes, stoats and weasels seek their prey with redoubled vigour, tracks in the snow rendering them easily traceable and the atmospheric severity adding a zest to the hunger of the pursuers.

Birds that are usually wild quit their haunts and come near the habitation of man, in the hope that they may find some food which will save them from starvation. Starlings, blackbirds, thrushes, chaffinches, robins, sparrows, wrens, and titmice will come into town gardens where food is placed for them, with boldness on the part of some species entirely opposed to their usual characteristics. They are by no means particular as to their diet, but will eat, in addition to seeds, crusts, etc. On fields where the stubble has not been ploughed in, flocks of small birds such as larks, yellow-hammers, and finches, congregate to pick up scanty fare of seed and insect; fieldfares, redwings, thrushes, and blackbirds search the hedgerows again and again, and are far from despising the hips and haws which they allowed to fall to the ground with reckless prodigality during the days of plenty in October and November.

Various kinds of waterfowl are compelled to leave their frozen homes and seek food by those streams which have sufficient rapidity and volume to keep them from freezing. Many of the shorebirds also wander inland, often for very long distances.

Cold, has in fact, a much greater influence than heat on avian migration. It brings in its train further flocks from Scandinavia, and crows, rooks, and those two northern thrushes - the redwing and fieldfare - appear in large numbers on English leas. The hooded crow is perhaps the only bird that is really contented. Woodpigeons fly past in smaller flocks than in the autumn; it is difficult for thousands to find food now in one locality. Squadrons of rooks search the fields in somewhat listless fashion. Disappointment has apparently left them disheartened. Snipe probe in the ooze for worms and larvae, while lapwings hunt the marshes near the coast or the inland fallows, as the weather makes one or the other desirable.

January flowers do not swell the granary. January blossoms fill no man's cellar.

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