Jan. 3-4: The Quadrantid meteor shower usually has a sharp peak, lasting only about an hour / Raccoons awake from semi-hibernation during thaws and wander the winter landscape / White-tailed deer will remain yarded up beneath hemlock boughs on south-facing slopes when snow is deep / Sunflower seeds are a relatively small part of a chickadee’s diet. When not at the feeder, chickadees are eating spiders, insects, and even carrion, as well as other kinds of seeds

During bad weather, mink will stay in their dens, usually near water and often under tree roots in old muskrat or beaver burrows / Look for redpolls in the ragweed patch / Mourning doves are gobbling up almost every kind of seed from birdfeeders, but on their own, they mostly eat tiny grass seeds / Eastern pipistrels, New England’s smallest species of bat, hibernate in the deepest portions of very humid caves, where temperatures are a constant 50 degrees

Territorial behavior of woodpeckers begins: downy woodpeckers hammer at about 15 times per second; hairy woodpeckers at 25 times per second / The banded chestnut, tan, gray, and red colors of turkey-tail fungus are less bright now than in the summer but are still rich and contrasting / Provident beavers feed off their autumn harvest of bark and remain beneath the ice for much of the winter / Meadow voles have short limbs and chunky bodies to conserve heat

The range of the tufted titmouse is moving north; the birds stay close to birdfeeders and human settlements / White-breasted nuthatches are picking hemlock seeds from their cones and storing them in bark crevices for later use / Listen for flocks of pine siskins, chittering as they pick seeds from birch catkins / A Cooper’s hawk may be keeping an eye on the birdfeeder, looking for small- and medium-sized meals as big as blue jays and mourning doves