Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer

Look out, look out, Jack Frost is about! I love the idea that if you glanced out to the fields in the crisp early hours of a January morning you might glimpse a spiky figure darting from tree to tree. Sharply glistening hair do glowing white in the moonlight, ice crystals crackling over leaves and grass, spread by a mere graze from Jack's fingertips. I know exactly what Jack Frost would look like in my mind's eye. But if you asked me to paint a more kindly looking creature to characterize winter, it would definitely look something like a snow bunting.

Have you ever seen a snow bunting? They flutter across the ground in groups, like drifting snowflakes on a chill wind. The males are bright white, their fat beaks and rounded chest conjuring images of polar bears, fur lined jackets and snowballs. The white of their feathers is tinged with rosy pink shadows, like someone's cheeks after a winter walk or the glow of an ember from a log fire. They overwinter with us and congregate on our Norfolk shoreline, flitting in shallow flight on the salty wind with the roar of a grey and bellowing seascape behind them.

And just imagine what they might have seen! These are birds of the glistening Arctic plains. Did they spend their summer against a backdrop of craggy blue ice? Did they see huskies, dog sleds, narwhal and reindeer? Did they sit perched along the roofs of Inuit townships watching the sea ice crack and shiver under the summer sun? Or did they cut their trip short and spend days in the blue-grey mountains of Scotland instead, where the mists roll like thunder clouds and the heather grows gold.

Just like the tooth fairy and Peter Pan symbolize childhood, snow buntings typify winter. There is no keener reminder of our short nights and the need for hats and gloves, than the sight of these birds on a blustery day on the North Norfolk coast. I saw some only the other day at the RSPB's Titchwell Marsh nature reserve. We stood in the new wildlife hide that straddles the bank between two lagoons, like a foot sure ship riding a surging breaker. It was warm in there; we could take our scarves off and stop holding our breath against the cold air outside. We gazed out as feathery rain spattered the windows, but the snow buntings didn't care. They were part of the winter landscape, at home in the cold and keen to put on a show for us, bobbing and scattering and trilling.

Visit Titchwell and you may well see them yourself. They are look far kinder than Jack Frost might.

Article seen in the Eastern Daily Press on 6th February 2011.