Jan. 3-4: The Quadrantids meteor shower may produce up to 40 meteors per hour. Best viewing is after midnight / Now the birds are down to a skeleton crew: chickadees, blue jays, a couple of nuthatches, and a few woodpeckers are holding down the fort. Other species pitch in from time to time to brighten the day / Red foxes can’t easily walk through snow that is more than 6 inches deep. They can bound over deeper snow, but that requires far more energy

Honeybees also appreciate the January thaw. On a warm day they can leave the hive briefly and void their accumulated excrement / The Virginia opossum is the first marsupial in North America since the asteroid hit. They came from South America 2 million years ago and now are wintering farther north in New England each year / During bad weather, mink will stay in their dens, usually near water, under tree roots, or in old muskrat or beaver bank burrows

Although beavers pack away a lot of branches for winter food, they spend the winter in relative poverty. Their tails, used for fat storage, are usually smaller in the spring / Male chickadees begin the songs that will help establish their breeding territories: “feebee, feebee;” the first note higher than the second / Birds and small mammals are an important part of a mink’s winter diet. Mink don’t like to spend a lot of time under water in the winter

Hibernating black bears maintain a core temperature of 88 degrees, only 8 degrees below normal / Deer mice cache food to avoid prolonged exposure to cold / When not confined by deep snow to a deeryard, a healthy white-tailed deer eats six to eight pounds of twigs a day. / Bad weather will send tree sparrows to birdfeeders. In normal times they prefer self-reliance and feed on weed seeds / Red foxes are pairing off. By March they will begin looking for a den