Hi everyone, Very nice, Ellie, that your county provides compost bins to its residents. Wish ours did that instead of spend money to collect yard debris. Alana, I love the sound of your orange-flowered garden. Orange colored flowers are some of my favorites. Shirley, great GLOW photo of the hot air balloons. What a shot that captures the moment! Jeanne, I watched the College World Series, too. I yelled enough to make myself somewhat hoarse. OK, so I admit to being a very "animated" college sports fan when I get into games... Although I am a die-hard SEC fan, I confess I was pulling for my husband's alma mater, U of AZ. Only fair, since he dares not pull against LSU. As for the cormorant chicks - When we band, we place a band on each leg. One is a small metal band issued by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Bird Banding Lab. The other is a plastic, colored band that can be read from a distance using binoculars or a spotting scope. Throughout the breeding season, we spend several days sitting in blinds, observing for banded birds that return to that colony. That enables us to get much more info other than through someone finding a dead banded bird and reporting it to the Bird Banding Lab. We can determine breeding site fidelity, survivorship, age structure, and other population demographics. Last year we re-spotted more than 400 unique bands at the 2 islands we conduct our observations on. Here is a "digiscoped" photo I took of one of the birds. As to why we do it at night - that is a matter of reducing disturbance as much as possible. All the birds are calmer at night, so we try to only go on the island when it is dark. That means banding all night long. It also means on observation days, we leave the boat dock at 3:00 am and don't leave the island until 9:00 pm. Makes for a long day, and you have to stay in your 5' x 7' blind for the duration (and that is why we bring a "honey bucket" with us). Hahaha. Happy gardening, Katie

Glad you liked it Jane. Purple Martins are wonderful birds and they bless the people who care for them and protect them from Starlings\House Sparrows with a summer full of breathtaking sights and sounds. Martins love gourds Jane and you should try those if you never have. Make sure that the gourds you but or make up yourself have the Starling Resistent entrances on them. That is the number one thing you can do to start a martin colony. If the martins show up to investigate a new house\gourds and have to fight off a bunch of starlings\house sparrows they will not stay. They will simply move on even if everything else about the martins site is perfect. At an established martin colony the martins will put up some fight to claim what is rightfully theirs from these foreign birds but in the end if the invasive species are allowed to remain the martins will lose. It is a sad reality that is being played out all across the Purple Martins range right now and most people never realize it is happening until one day they look out and say.."What happened to those beautiful,swooping birds we used to have in that house? Where did they go??" Then a Starling pair sits on one side of the house. Two pairs of House Sparrows occupy the other side and this former "Martin House" that was once a thing of enchantment and pure beauty has now been transformed into an apartment house for slumbirds. If you seek a colony of martins Jane you must adopt setting up your gourd\houses,etc to address stopping the foreign invasive species. That is the key to getting started. Once you are a martin landlord and you see how wonderful they truly are you will always want to host them in your backyard bird habitat. They are simply majestic in every way...Mike

Rachel, The Purple Martin is like a God Among birds bigtime smile..They are as American as baseball and your grandma's apple pie. They are the true harbinger of spring and once you hear that voice overhead or see that black jet form knife across the sky you know winter is dead for good. I had 124 pairs last year here that fledged nearly 500 babies. They cannot all return to nest here and I hope they find other caring folks that put up a proper martin house or gourds equipped with starling resistent entrances and start new colonies. There is no comparison between a beautiful springtime blue\black martin and a starling Rachel..The martin puts them to shame. One martin perched amidst a bunch of McDonald's parking lot,french fry eatin' starlings would look like a flowering daisy in a field of cockleburrs big grin..Love them so much. Glad you liked my poem Rachel. I see you live in Ky. Well if you are ever over towards Owensboro you would be welcome to come and watch the martins here on a warm summer evening or morning. They are a treat. By eliminating the invasive species anyone can have a nice colony of them in no time if they put up the proper house and\or gourds...Mike

I think any good book on bluebirds as well as NABS (North American Bluebird Society) will all agree that it is best to clean out the old nest as soon as they fledge. I also wash the box and then spray it with a 90% water, 10% bleach solution and then rinse, rinse, and rinse again. Some nest boxes are cleaner than others on fledging day but even if you don't want to take the box down for a good cleaning, at least removing the nest and wiping out the inside of the box will help. If a bluebird returns to the box and the nest is still there, she'll continue to build on top of the old nest and then you have a new nest that is too high and too close to the entrance hole. Good luck on fledging! Hope you get to see some or all of them go! :-)