100 years ago: Pale shoots signal the new year dawn

Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 1 January 1916

SURREY
The sky was grey and lowering this morning, but in the east there were streaks of orange and dull pink colour ("puce" the latter was called by the farmer's wife), and when we got a glint of the sun the cornfield appeared of a just perceptible green. The youngest shoots of new wheat are striking straight upward on the higher of the small mould ridges, but are lost as yet in the shallow depth of the slight watercourses below the rim where the harrow or the drill had been. Is there anything that informs us more truly of the new year dawn than these pale shoots clothing the acres that a few weeks ago were wholly bare?

Along the border-side of the field hard by the wood - and nearly all our plough-land here is wooded on one or another side - a flock of blue pigeons were feeding; they flew straight and high as one approached, warier than almost any other bird. The thrushes were bolder; one, a missel thrush, was piping a hoarse, weak note, while a little party of chaffinches in the hedge were preening their feathers. The larks, too, were busy in the lower meadow; the weather is so mild that the air seems to enliven everything with the freshness of spring. There are leaf-buds on the wild clematis and the early roses, and long spikes on the mezereon. In the evening the old yardman came out to pen the fowls away safely. A small shooting party had been through the coppices a couple of days ago, and the beaters disturbed a fox, "a fine dog," he says. "No going back with the cunning rascal for some time yet, and he'll make sharper work of it at nights if he can. But what else can you expect? Foxes is foxy."