A night of freezing fog was falling. Our breath steaming, my nephew and I paused at a gate. In the field, bunched together for warmth, sheep munched on a pile of fodder beet. “Ten yowes and a tup,” my nephew counted. “Yowe” is the northern term for a ewe, and “tup” is a ram. My nephew, who works with livestock, explained that in spring the yowes would give birth to lambs.

A robin landed on the gate and, flying down among the hooves, picked up its own snack.