If your neighborhood was graced by carolers during the holidays count yourself as lucky. The singers’ beautiful voices filled the void of silence that otherwise afflicts Western New York’s winters. If your neighborhood is graced by nature’s counterpart to those musical souls you’re just as lucky. Other than some rather basic sounds, most species of birds remain quiet this time of year. It’s a little too cold to focus on attracting the opposite sex and marking territory. That, and their attention is purely on the questions of survival: How do they get the calories they need for this cold weather without expending too many of those energy points that are precious and few this time of year? How do they hide from predators when the trees and grasses are stripped of foliage?    But, there is a bird that thinks differently, acts differently, and sounds differently this time of year. That would be the Carolina wren, the tiny caroler of our winters. The males of these wee creatures si...

Birdwatchers are, in some way, listers. Most keep life lists, counting all the species of birds that they’ve ever seen. Then you have birders who tabulate both species and numbers for various special annual events like the Christmas Bird Count, Feederwatch, and the Great Backyard Bird Count. And, there are those who take on a competitive Big Year, trying to accumulate as many birds as possible in a calendar year. The North American record is held by John Weigel who saw 840 species in 2019, surpassing his 2016 record of 836. Earlier in this decade, I started something I call the Little Year. By doing so, I keep count of all the species I see in New York State each year. I’m not driven to accumulate as many species as possible, so I don’t go out of my way to gather gull species in the wintry Niagara Gorge, nor do I spy upon wetlands at wildlife refuges in May to get shorebird species, and I don’t chase down rare species whose locations were shared among birders online. My only goal is to...