Above zero for a while, but with a harsh north wind.

Squirrel track coming in to bird feeder. with interesting starting point.

Even if I fill the bird feeder brimming full in the morning, it's empty by four o'clock in the evening. So, I've been worrying that, with this largess, I have been tampering with natural selection.

I regularly sit in the breakfast nook in the morning, working on computer stuff, but with a good view of the back yard, the bird feeders, and the great out-of-doors. Today there was a large and varied crowd, until suddenly—not a bird in sight. That's when when Sue said, "Look at the big hawk sitting right here on the outdoor thermometer!"

On the plus side, daylight is once again returning, with the days noticably longer.

And here is this from Wisconsin nature writer Mell Ellis:

Edge of the Hereafter

By Mel Ellis

January narrows perimeters, and wild ones, so plentiful during the halcyon days of green grass, have experienced such population losses that, from the anonymity of overabundance, the remaining survivors begin to emerge as individuals. The big-city dweller, moving about the crowds of nameless faces, knows about this when on moving to a village he gets to know everybody in town. When there were a hundred cottontails, we could not distinguish one from the other. Now, likely they number a dozen or fifteen.

So, they get names, and two are referred to as the Prickly Ash rabbits. The prickly ash is protection from attack. Hawk and fox, knowing about the thorns, settle for mice, and the Prickly Ash rabbits scrounge out a living by eating the bark of any digestible plant within the confines of their nigh-impenetrable fortress.

Then there is the Pine rabbit, which hides for protection against enemies and cold beneath conifer skirts, foraging only as far as the ironwood tree for catkins, which droop low as the snow. A particularly hardy individual is the Watercress Creek rabbit. It lives right on the ice of a desultory tributary to the main stream beneath an overhang of red dogwood. If its quarters are less than comfortable, its pantry contains all manner of bankside greens, where forty-eight-degree spring water keeps the snow away and the soil soft.

Then the Cattail Patch rabbits: five cattail patches, five Cattail Patch rabbits. Only a weasel or a mink is likely to catch them in such heavy cover, but since food is scarce in any cattail patch, they must risk night-time forays across less friendly terrain. Brush Pile rabbits are always eating their own homes. There are at least three brush piles, and each houses at least one and sometimes two cottontails.

There is one Sugar Bush rabbit. Though his home is short on protective cover, plenty of maple shoots provide sweet eating. Then we have the Fence Line rabbit, Briar Patch rabbit, Spruce Grove rabbit, and three House rabbits. All except the House rabbits, which hang around the back door waiting for handouts, live right on the edge of the Hereafter. One deep snow can lift them above the fuel that feeds their furnaces.