February is heavy. February is fickle. It sometimes gives itself an extra day, and the month is layered in love and chocolates. But it’s also the month that fully encapsulates winter, even as we desperately hope for spring. The snow lingers. The light feels short.

And even a lingering cold can make you question your energy — the kind of cold that should have been gone days ago. Sure, the chill slows us. But maybe we’re just following nature’s cadence.

Or, if we resist winter, perhaps the doldrums hit hardest because we want to move at the pace of spring.

Winter doesn’t drain you. It reduces your range.Coffee is cold. Batteries are low. Snow still blankets the ground.Maybe February just wants you to hibernate — and notice what still functions.

Did you ever notice how electronics tell us when they’re low?

Phones vibrate at 20%, nudging us to charge. Cameras blink red like railroad crossings. Electric cars politely suggest charging stops along the route. Laptops dim and chime.

We humans? We just keep going. We don’t come with warning signals when our energy runs low.

This month, I’ve been thinking about what it means to function on reduced range. Sometimes winter doesn’t drain us. It asks us to hibernate, to conserve, to follow its rhythm. Electronics don’t fully stop at 9%. They just adapt.

And right now, there is one thing charging a little bit each day: daylight.

It’s noticing the small sparks: three extra minutes of light, a cold coffee that still fuels a moment of focus, a camera that still clicks and captures a moment even when its battery is low.

Press play, and join me in noticing what’s still functioning, still moving through the cold, still lighting the way. How do you recharge during the winter months?

Have you ever watched a loading screen and felt your pulse pick up just a little? The spinning wheel. The buffering bar. That quiet instruction: Please don’t close this window.

We’re uncomfortable when we can’t see progress. We want confirmation. A percentage. A sign that the wait means something.

Late winter feels like that.

This week’s episode explores that gap — the space between what’s happening and what’s visible. The quiet beginnings that don’t announce themselves. The kind of progress that offers no confirmation screen, no percentage bar, no green checkmark.

Spring doesn’t arrive all at once.It loads slowly.And so do we.

You can’t recognize almost-spring unless you’ve lived the whole way here. Through the dim light, the long nights, the repetition of cold mornings.

The accumulated weight of it. The sequence. The repetition.

Only then can you recognize what almost-spring really means.

Red-winged blackbird recording courtesy of: Stanislas Wroza, XC1021377. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/1021377.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0

Episode 16: The Art of Dialing In

Sometimes what you've been searching for has been right in front of you all along. You just weren't tuned to the right frequency.

After years of trying to hand-feed chickadees, a red-breasted nuthatch landed on my palm. I'd been trying to feed the wrong bird.

In this episode, I explore what it means to dial in instead of starting over. Why native plants struggle in an instant-hit world. And why attention often matters more than effort.

In This Episode:

The moment a nuthatch finally landed (and why it took years)

Why we're measuring slow work with fast metrics

The difference between buttons and dials

What native plant gardening teaches us about presence

The invitation: notice what's already working

Mentioned in This Episode:

Episode 15: Snow Regrets: I Never Learned So Much From a Bird

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Email: flutterbymeadows@gmail.com

I went looking for one bird on an early morning beach walk... I found a different one. And somehow, it taught me far more than the bird I was chasing.

Last week, I wondered whether a trip away from home might leave me without words. Without the familiar inspiration of my known surroundings. Not just writer’s block. But writer’s drought.

Instead, the trip handed me the story.

Sometimes, what we’re looking for isn’t found by chasing. It’s found by showing up, paying attention, and letting the moment arrive on its own.

What happens when you stop rushing the moment…and let it come to you?

Interestingly, the story was swirling around in my notebook for 20 days, I just needed to turn to the page to see it. On January 7th I wrote: “You don’t find the thing by chasing it. You find it by being present when it arrives.” January 28th, the story finally surfaced. Here is the companion piece I wrote a few years back.

In this episode, Samantha reflects on the unexpected surprises that life presents, drawing from her experiences with nature and the changing weather. She recounts a moment in Iceland where a cab driver expressed his preference for surprises over forecasts, which resonated with her as she navigated a snowstorm back home. This led her to ponder the familiar things in life that often go unnoticed, like the Blue Jay, a bird she had overlooked despite its everyday presence. Through her journey in bird photography, she learned that what we perceive as familiar can often be deceiving, revealing deeper layers of beauty and complexity when we take the time to truly observe.

Episode 13: The Engagement Calendar — And How to Build a Relationship with Nature This Year

What are you already in the middle of? This week, I spent a day away from my birds and realized something: the relationships that matter aren't the ones we're trying to build from scratch in January—they're the ones we've already been living and forgot to notice.

In this episode, I talk about:

Why missing one day with my backyard birds felt like breaking a promise I didn't know I'd made

The difference between "planting natives to save pollinators" and creating conditions for life to return when it's ready

How belonging is harder to sell than saving—but why it's what actually sustains us

Why wildlife gardening isn't about decorating a space, but entering a relationship

The worn path to my feeder and what it taught me about staying with something long enough to become part of the pattern

If you're tired of New Year's pressure to add more, do more, be more—this episode is about recognizing what you're already part of and choosing to stay with it.

What's the tiny ritual that starts your day? What rhythm, when you broke it, made you feel a little lost?

Those are the things worth returning to in 2026.

Not because they're new. Because they're true.

Related links:

Episode 12: Goal-Setting Theater vs. Nature's Quiet Rehearsal

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Follow along on Instagram: @flutterbymeadows

Episode 12 | Goal-Setting Theater vs. Nature’s Quiet Rehearsal:

January doesn’t ask for reinvention. It asks for patience.

Maybe what January is really asking is not what you’ll become, but what you notice while you’re becoming it.

January often arrives with a false starting line — resolutions, reinvention, and pressure to begin again. But nature keeps a different rhythm.

This episode is not about:

- resolutions

- productivity

- self-improvementIt is about learning to read the season you’re in.

In Episode 12, I reflect on moonlight and unfinished darkness, winter birds pairing up, and an unplanned New Year’s Day walk on a windswept New Jersey beach. No goals. No lifers. Just noticing. Because maybe January isn’t for becoming someone new—it’s for paying attention to what’s already unfolding.

This is a bonus episode — a seasonal aside that begins with a fallen mailbox and ends somewhere else entirely.

It’s not about ecology in the traditional sense, but about systems, interdependence, and how removing one small, seemingly insignificant piece can cause everything around it to wobble.

And a quiet thank-you to our mail carriers, who show up day after day — in wind, rain, heat, and cold — keeping so many small systems moving along, often unnoticed.

I hope you and yours are having a joyous and celebratory holiday season, filled with peace and reflection.

See you in 2026, everyone — and thank you, as always, for listening.

As if the mailbox saga wasn’t enough, we also drove over a present in the garage too (that’s a whole other story…).

Consider this your reminder that perfection is not required this time of year.