The water in the bird bath has frozen solid.
It reminds me of the time- back in the 1950s- when our next door neighbour's goldfish pond did the same. One didn't like to ask what exactly had become of the fish, but she did remark- later in the year- that although the fish had gone- the pondweed and waterlilies were flourishing like never before. She was related by marriage to Thomas Hardy- his sister-in-law to be exact- and one can imagine him turning the incident into one of his grimly humorous "satires of circumstance".
