Everything was quiet under a blanket of snow. It was bitterly cold and the brambles that had been weighed down by blackberries in the summer were now covered in frost.

I was walking in the snowy field with my mum and two brothers when I saw lots of large and small animal prints dotted around. My mum downloaded an app to discover which animals had made them. It was pretty funny because the app identified some prints as coyotes! But I think they were made by foxes.

There were prints made by rabbits and horses, and the app got the badger prints right as we know there’s a sett nearby. There were signs of deer too (we’ve definitely seen muntjacs here before). Bird footprints were dotted around here and there; they were obviously looking for worms and insects in the frozen ground. And there must have been rabbit burrows in the brambles as there were little prints leading in and out. It was like a road!

In the summer this field had swallows swooping over it and I’m sad that they’ve gone. But today the bare trees were full of jet-black crows. A murder of crows it’s called. They stood out a lot against the white snow and grey sky.

I enjoyed the snowy walk so much that the next day I decided to walk along the towpath next to the canal. There were more tracks in the snow, this time made by the moorhens that I could see paddling in the half-frozen water.
Rosie, 10

Read today’s other YCD, by Meg, 9: ‘A winter surprise – wood ants busy on their nest’