Country diary: ice that's hair today, but gone in an instant

Forest of Ae, Dumfries and Galloway: Hair ice fits its name perfectly, it is coiffed and has a parting, but as morning sunlight creeps across the river it vanishesMist is rising from the Water of Ae, turning gold as the dawn light slips across the valley through the forest of birch and pine. Fieldfares clatter down the path at our presence and a goldcrest calls sibilantly through the still air. Under the mist, a dipper stands up to its shins in the flow of clear water, bobbing with the ripples r