It's always great to have some kind of in-universe reason for why something has been on a hiatus. Of course, I'm not sure what that says about the strip as a whole. Can we only see things happening in The Bird Feeder when Josh is awake? Is the whole strip just something Josh's brain has been making up this whole time? Or maybe it's the other way around: The Bird Feeder is actually a dream that Josh has been having, and the hiatus means that he's been horribly sleep deprived.

Of course, the real explanation was that the Wacom tablet that I use to draw the strip was too old to work with the new version of Mac OSX, and I got a new one for Christmas. Those other explanations are much more interesting, though.

And yes, there is one species of bird known to hibernate, the common poorwill. Chickadees don't, though.