Hi Linda: I never thought of pesticides. Come to think of it I have not seen a ground hog, skunk, or racoon lately either. The ground hogs always attacked my swiss chard, and ate the apples which dropped from my tree. There are definitely no pesticides on my property and the neighbours on either side have small kids and work so they just plunk in a few annuals from the nursery each year. We live in the suburbs and there are a few farms nearby: mostly corn and strawberries. However, they have recently been bought out by a larger outfit and I wonder about their methods. I commented to neighbours recently that you don't see any worms in the corn, which were present when 'old Henry' ran the farm organically. I must investigate this more fully. I definitely have fewer bees, and I have seen several yellow jackets rather slow moving and listless. I get some butterflies attracted to my Blue Fortune, but that's about it. It really is sad. I must make an effort to check other parts of the neighbourhood. Thanks for your ideas.

Thanks for the response, Loris, and so glad you enjoyed my article! I agree, the young cardinals are noisy, but then all the baby birds are when they want food! I love it, though, because we have our windows open, and as soon as I hear them squawking, I can rush over and watch. Today there was a squirrel doing contortions trying to leap from our hammock to our mixed seed feeder, and it was so funny watching him. We have that feeder strung on a string in the very middle of the back yard, so they can't jump onto it from any trees or straight up. And the squirrels don't seem to care about any of the other seeds, other than the one for sunflowers, but we finally learned at got one of those spring ones that close up if something too heavy lands on the perch. The few squirrels that originally tried it must have passed the word on to the rest, hardly any squirrels try to get seeds there any more. Happy Spring--and right around the corner, Happy Summer! Darlene

i had a couple of stray red wings flock with the starlings this winter. But we also had several sunny warm days and yesterday a flock of red wing blackbirds showed up. A hawk must have followed them and got one. Almost all my birds have been hiding since then a small bunch of pine siskins are in the tree but are hiding most of the time in the needles.

most any seeds or nuts or grains even coffee beans have oil in them. Oils and fats can go stale easily. what some people do with even stuff they use for themselves is store the flour or corn meal or coffee or even bird seed and nuts oats or anything with oil in it in sealed bags or containers in a chest freezer. It keeps them from getting stsle or rancid. the other thing to do is buy in small portions and use up before they get old. Also if you live in a humid area things can mold easily the the freezer keep them from getting moldy.