Warm in the chill

I've got sort of out of order.... this walk was bright and frosty.

I kept hoping to see a hare, but no joy on that score, just the familiar muntjac and grey squirrels.

I noted a few places where foraging badgers had excavated little holes in a straight line following the tyre tracks on the path. A hole every foot or so. Like stitches, it was so regular. I peered in but of course whatever they had been after had gone. Why on the track? Just because the badgers, like us, use the cleared passages and avoid brambles? Or is there something specific about the conditions where vehicle (occasionally) pass.

Another oddity: the muntjac scrapes, or at least the ones on this part of the reserve, tend to be on the west side of the trunk - which also in this area tends to be the lower side. Do they favour the lower side or the west side? Funnily enough, I always sit on the west - well, north west - and lower side of Kairos.

What is that about which side of a tree the moss is on? Ah! The moss, unlike the deer and the Crone, chooses the north, which is cooler and therefore damper. But neither Crone nor deer go for the sensible south. Maybe it's the slope that makes the difference.