Swamp sparrow, Henne

The feast is over, the guests have departed, and there's nothing left to do but dine on the remains... and the remains... and the remains. We'll be eating leftovers—and that's not counting the turkey soup, which I'll tackle next week—for days, and we certainly won't be alone in dining on what nature, to say nothing of not-so-hungry gourmands, has left behind. Our menu won't, of course, include bright red Winterberries, but, like this Swamp Sparrow, we'll be packing in the calories, whatever their color and condition. Winterberry is a deciduous kind of holly, and our experience with our evergreen hollies is that the berries need a stretch of winter cold to be rendered soft and sweet. This doesn't appear to be the case with Ilex verticillata, which, from one sparrow's perspective, is producing ready-for-scarfing-down berries right about now.