I started out feeling like you do, Barb. I couldn't see myself killing an innocent bird. Then came the summer of the bluebird massacre. I lost 3 adults to house sparrows as they were building nests or sitting on eggs. Once the bluebird is inside the house, the sparrow comes in on top of him, and he can't get out or defend himself. And the last one, the male, wasn't dead. He had been pecked in the head until he was bloody and disabled, and I had to finish the job. That's when I decided that if I was going to have bluebird and martin houses, it's my responsibility to keep the birds safe. I installed a sparrow trap in one of the martin house holes, and trapped many a housesparrow. I would then get them into a plastic bag (the ones the newspaper come in work great) and shoot the HOSP with a bb gun. The numbers of sparrows has diminished drastically, but they still show up on occasion, and I have to be diligent. It doesn't take them long to wreak havoc. This summer, I lost all the eggs in 3 purple martin nests in no time at all. The thing that irks me, is they don't have to be so destructive. The martins would let them live in their house too, they don't have to kill everything in sight. And they don't even need to nest in a nestbox - they'll nest anywhere - even on the front of our Wal-mart store. Texas Carol

I just got a HOSP trap. Forgive the newbie here. It has traps on both sides with a holding compartment in the center. Unfortunately I got it too late. I had my first bluebird pair just building their nest (I put up a pair of boxes last year). The nest wasn't even completed and I found the female bb dead this morning. I'm assuming it was the male HOSP that has been hanging around harrassing them. I don't even know if he has a mate. I have also seen a starling. They have no interest in that house except when the bb's are there. Anyway, the trap will go out as soon as I can get myself organized. I am planning on getting CO2. Is that a good idea? I have to get moving on this. I also have a purple martin house that I'll be opening soon.

Do not be too quick to dismiss the lowly sparrow. I grew up on a dairy farm in N.E.Ohio and I have always had a passing interest in bird watching, however like most people I erroneously thought a sparrow is a sparrow, is a sparrow and lumped them into one of two broad categories, song sparrows and house sparrows, all of which were often considered at best a minor nuisance. Last June I officially retired and took up nature photography as a retirement hobby. Over the summer I spent most of my time hiking the woods, meadows and swampy areas, but when the summer birds migrated last fall I then set up feeders and turned my attention to the birds that i could attract. I typically set my camera on a tripod zeroed in on a feeder or a ground feeding location, then I sit motionless with a remote shutter release in my pocket and snap pictures of the birds as they come in. In the course of taking 2 or 300 pictures a day, it goes without saying that I get a lot of shots that contain sparrows as well as the more desirable birds. Later while editing the photos I began to notice that many of the sparrows had what i thought were strange or unusual markings. In early October my Mother presented me with a book called "Birds of Ohio" by McCormac & Kennedy, published by the Lone Pine Press (ISBN 13:978-1-55105-392-9)). From this book I discovered that their are over twenty different species of Sparrows common to Ohio, two of which have red heads such as you describe. I then got another book called "The Sparrows of the united States and Canada published by Princeton University Press (ISBN 13:978-0-125-9897-1) in which they list over 62 species of Sparrows native to the U.S. & Canada. In addition, i learned that the House Sparrow is not native to North America and is officially not listed as a Sparrow, but rather they are listed as "Old World Sparrows" which includes another 37 species that have been introduced to North America, primarily from Europe. From my personal experience I would challenge everyone, rather than seek ways to discourage the lowly Sparrow, take a closer look and you might be amazed at what you see, and if the Sparrows are consuming all the seed in your feeders, do as I have done, put up more feeders because all of God's creatures gotta eat. Currently I am going through 5 30lb bags of wild bird seed a month, not to mention another two bushels of corn that i put in chicken feeders out in the meadow for the wild turkeys but then when i consider how many hours I spend watching those birds, it is really rather cheap entertainment.

We've been splitting our time 50/50 between Los Angeles and our house in Cathedral City (Palm Springs are), and we have nice, large outdoor spaces at both houses. I would like to have people over, but I don't mind staying in our houses for this period. I miss going to fabric stores. We have so much to do at both houses - much of it maintenance - that we do not run out of things to do. I think I prefer the house in CC because it has a pool, but it is a bit expensive to heat the pool in the dead of winter. It's no more expensive than cooling that house in the summer, however. We have bikes at both houses and go for bike rides whenever we want, although I will not ride my bike in CC in the summer - I just spend more time in the pool. My original plan was to rent the house in CC for additional income, and so our budget is stretched pretty thin now. Cathedral City put a moratorium on short term vacation rentals one week after we closed on that house, and so we haven't been able to rent it anyway. We're very glad to have it as a safe get-away, since not only are we prevented from air travel - we cannot afford it at this time. There are lots of places for us to go for hikes or mountain biking in southern California, and so there's always that. I stopped going to the beach on a regular basis when we moved from Venice to Westchester in 2009, and I do miss that a bit, but it's still there. However, I will not be going back to the Venice boardwalk until the pandemic is over. To answer the question: No, I do not find that the more I stay at home the more I want to. I definitely want to get out, but I'm not climbing the walls and am reasonably content.