Exceptional

An unseasonably warm spell, so we have bees, so we have bee pictures.

A 200 metre stretch of path beside a brook, all of it lined with hazel, all of it with catkins in every stage of maturity, in full afternoon sun, all of it literally, audibly humming with honey bees; an amazing sight/sound that I've never before experienced. Special circumstances: it was an extraordinarily warm day for February; that much hazel in one place is unusual; when we reached the end of the hazels we spotted behind them a bank of 40 hives, placed there, I'm certain, by the large-scale commercial beekeeper in our village, whose hives we encounter all over the district (always in 20s or 40s - 20 being the number he can easily fit on a road trailer)

Viktor is Ukranian; he visited the village as a young man, fell in love at first sight with a young woman from a local family (and she him) and has never left. He is from a family of beekeepers in Ukraine who, he points out, managed to run a private business throughout the soviet communist era. He has lived with bees since he could walk. As well as producing the obvious honey and other hive products, he rears and sells many hundreds of queen bees each year to other beekeepers - most of them delivered (appropriately) by royal mail.

Of course, he and his family are much affected by the invasion; he has organised and delivered supplies and vehicles into Ukraine. That is separate from the Ukrainian aid effort that Mrs M works with, also in the village, sending medicines, clothes, blankets, generators and vehicles on a significant scale. Both of these are working by word-of-mouth and personal contacts, based on trust and goodwill. This is just in our small community. I wonder how many (hundreds?) more of these under-the-radar, unofficial, more-or-less private efforts are going on in our country - and probably all across Europe? Concrete compassion and a longing to help resist evil, entirely outside the worlds of politics, diplomacy or the established charity sector. As extraordinary as trees humming with bees in February

The extra is just because it is Feb 14, first picture of the day, before the fog lifted. Jackdaws are among the most loyally pair-bonded of all birds. They perch together, fly together (even when in a large flock) and feed together as a pair. They make me think of Philip Pullman's daemons - two separate halves of a single entity. Bona fide love birds