Sharp-shinned hawks do well at birdfeeders and prey on birds as big as mourning doves or as small as pine siskins / Warm days bring chipmunks to the birdfeeder to top up their stores / Yellow jackets (often mistakenly called hornets or bees) are gone, and the queens are in hibernation. They will not reuse old nests next year / Wood turtles are entering hibernation, often on the bottoms of slow-moving streams / Spring peepers have dug themselves deep into the soil

Beavers become more active in the afternoon as winter approaches / White ash, birch, and box elder hold on to their winged seeds – food for winter birds / The spores of some clubmosses are ripe. Tapping the plant may release a tiny plume of yellow spore smoke / Late migrants: snow geese, red throated loons, ring billed gulls, pine siskins, evening grosbeaks, and common redpolls / Muskrats will leave their lodges in winter to dig roots and tubers from under the ice

Frail, light tan Bruce spanworm moths, also called hunter’s moths, may be abundant in sugar maple stands on sunny days from mid October through November / Very late migrants: many of the earliest arrivals in spring are among the last to leave in the fall. Buffleheads, goldeneyes, common and hooded mergansers, mallards, black ducks, and great blue herons may still be found on lakes and rivers / Bullfrogs usually spend two winters as tadpoles

Newly fallen birch seeds will travel far if blown across crusted snow / Whitetail bucks’ antlers are full grown, and they begin to spar with one another / Veeries, Swainson’s thrushes, and gray-cheeked thrushes winter south of the border, but hermit thrushes stay in the southern U.S. / This is a good time to prune trees. Limit pruning to less than one third of the live crown, use sharp equipment, and maintain the bark-branch collar for quick wound closure