January 25, 2026

Where: inside, thank you very much

When: all day, except the shoveling, which I did not enjoy and which I'm going to have to do again before sundown

Bird Species: around 8am an American crow was systematically picking through and rejecting items from the recycling bin that fell over. I saw this from the window, in the 20 or so minutes today where it was not actively snowing or sleeting.

SKW BOTD BEHIND THE SCENES

Incredibly, 80 new sign-ups for the blog this week, just in time to have to miss a day, or even two. I will link to the policy here.

In the spirit of consistency and mood, my first approach here was to go through the 16,105 photos on my phone (oh, shush) and see what birds I saw On This Day last year or the year before. Do you know, there was not a single bird photo on January 25 to be found?

As a substitute for pithy observations about local birds, and for my actual thoughts, which are exclusively about snow and sleet and how much I do not like them, here are some discoveries unearthed in my phone, dated January 25:

• January 25, 2025 - I started this jigsaw puzzle. I am a jigsaw puzzle person. This is a White Mountain puzzle, and those were little illustrations for each of the 50 states.

• January 25, 2024 - I made these broccoli tots, they hit every time. I've never made a bad dish with one of the recipes from that site. The Jamaican Coconut Brown Stew Chicken is incredible.

• January 25, 2023 - For some reason I saved this photo of Jean Stapleton and Alice Cooper. The internet would like to tell you they are at Studio 54, but this was actually a fundraiser at the Hollywood Bowl for the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival.

• January 25, 2022 - my niece was on one. I went through the lawyers to get her permission to share this.

• January 25, 2021 - Presumably my sister had texted "I missed it; what was the Final?" A family of trivia and puzzle people.

• January 25, 2020 - A selfie in which I look so well-maintained, well-rested, and cute that I had to lie down on the couch and stare into space for a while.

So those are the hits from January 25th past. The hits from today are eleven inches and counting, and I don't care what the websites you frequent say, that is too many inches.

Today's Back-Up Bird: One of the several cardinals from yesterday's pre-storm walk. I read my camera manual this week! This was a little experiment with increasing the shutter speed, because he was moving around a good bit, keeping an eye on the female as she foraged. It's not great, but it's not bad! I think I understand all the manual settings now (faster shutter speed to freeze action, increase aperture for low light like yesterday's featured photo), but to be honest, trying to experiment with all the little buttons and knobs while wearing gloves and mittens was a challenge.

I think there will be some birds out and about tomorrow.