Three Pines

In a land of forest it is unusual to see a few trees alone.  These three trees are left to seed the surrounding area after the forest has been felled. Leaving a few trees helps preserve the soil habitat with its symbiotic fungus and bugs that will help the new forest grow. If the new trees come from older ones already growing here it ensures the new trees are suited to this area.  All this has been learned since the 70's when Swedish harvesters felled vast areas of trees, removing everything, and then planted pines imported from the USA and Canada. Sometimes it worked, but more often the trees didn't thrive. If they didn't grow that would have been relatively cheap knowledge, but they mostly grew fine for about 20 years and then fell prey to bugs and diseases. Fortunately that methodology is now discredited and slightly more ecological thinking is in vogue.  All this puts me in mind of Richard Powers' book "The Overstory" which takes up many of these points.
In the foreground you can see the snow is disturbed. It was like this all the way around the field edges and there were masses of deer tracks. We couldn't decide if they were the tracks of young elk, or of the red deer that have also colonised this area. Whichever, they have scraped away the snow to get at the grass underneath. So far it's been a good winter for wildlife, with so little snow and no real cold weather. Now they are having to work a bit harder to get their food but it's still fairly easy. If it carries on this way there will be a lot of animals surviving the winter, more than usual.