* "The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold"

These are four [reduced in size] photos from this January's snowstorm in Lincoln, NE, of a Dark-eyed Junco, a Blue Jay, a Northern Cardinal, and a European Starling (damned immigrants!). I'd laid out a "ground feeder" on my 3rd-floor-apartment balcony, and the juncos were there a good 50 minutes out of every daylight hour; their ten-minute absence?—usually a Blue Jay or two insisting upon a morsel. The photos are so murky because 1) it was usually overcast, and so poor lighting (but for the junco pict); and 2) my patio-door window was/is filthy!—and it was too wretchedly cold to leave it open. (Talk about "through a glass darkly": I feel an extended metaphor for my own existence coming on, but I'll resist. . . .)