When milk comes frozen

It's a long time since I noticed an icy lump in the milk bottle, blocking the flow as I pour. The milkman, who has done this round for four years, says that this is the first time that he has known it to happen. Surplus milk goes back to be emptied from the bottle for the pigs but the milk froze before he finished the round.

I remember in the mid-1970s that this used to happen occasionally and I would find the frozen milk pushing up the cap from the bottle.

I pour half a kettle of boiling water on the chunk of ice that is our bird bath and later notice a sparrow drinking there. The sunflower seed needs topping up as usual and for most of the day a pheasant pecks around below the feeders.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk