As we have learned over the centuries, when it comes to burning witches, it doesn’t really matter if you have burned a real witch or just someone who, in your fevered, partisan, and paranoid imagination, could easily become a witch in the future. It is the burning that is the message.
For delight, add to winter at its most visually captivating the flurry of a diversity of birds winging in for high energy food at the most modest, or lavish, of bird feeders.
Thrushes are not particularly known for eating suet, or for coming to feeders of any kind, but it hung around for five days or so, even flying out from under the porch steps one day.
A commotion of flapping colors, shapes and sizes approaches and persists as birds take turns digging into the high-energy food we provide, whether the most modest or lavish spread.