Nicola chester

Nadia Shaikh seeks good company for a search-and-gorge to get her through the ruthless darkness of the winter months

Jolly frock-coated robins, majestic geese and arboreal partridges make for both literal and symbolic centrepieces at Christmas, says Matthew Dennison, as he revels in the cultural history of the season’s feathered fowl and game

THIS MONTH Barn owls

Plundering a local byway for a spot of festive foraging, John Lewis-Stempel finds all life proliferating in the multitudinous micro-habitat of the winter hedgerow

Whether winter-faded ferns, the spindly harvestman or the tyrannical stare of an irate chicken, through-lines from the prehistoric to our modern age are all around us in November, says John Lewis-Stempel

● A couple of miles inland from the ...