When you all talk about suet, do you mean the packaged gooey stuff that goes in the square green wired baskets, or the bell-shaped thingy with seeds all over it? Or something enrirely different?? Terrene, what is a log? Can you post a picture of what you all are talking about? Oh, and I did see the woodpecker yesterday evening, but not at my feeder. He (actually she) was flying from one tree to another. It was funny watching her. On the tree she stopped at, she landed on the trunk and hopped backwards (down the trunk) and then after a little pecking, hopped back upwards.

Ok, I did e-mail her privately, and she did respond. She is OK. She has been very ill with food poisoning and hasn't been to work where she can use her computer to access the forums. She asked me to post this message to you from her: From Rachel: "Wow..thanks, guys, for caring enough to check up on me! Yes, the quick real-time posts to Twitter's Twitpic have me spoiled and I keep telling myself I'll move the photos to the Picasa Web Album, but since this is Thailand and I'm always out birding or at work, it's easy to postpone, then forget. Also, the internet here at the hotel is weak and sporadic at best; i.e., I just posted a response to you here and it didn't go through. I'll check my album and try some updating today since I've been home, sick, since last Wed., with food poisoning. Up to this point, the internet hasn't been working, and I've been in too poor shape to do it anyway, but able to get around some now."

Thanks! Yes, when I was well enough to drive the scooter I went to the hospital to be checked out by a doctor before returning to work. A bout of food poisoning in early Dec. showed none of my stand-by home remedies or medicine prescribed by the doctor worked, except for MMS drops I'd brought from the U.S. MMS kills anything, but it also makes me nauseated, so I had to take the drops while already feeling that way. Still it took several days to gets things stopped, and I didn't think I was going to make it. I plan to go birding at Khao Yai National Park tomorrow even though I'm a still a bit wobbly. I hope one of the hornbills is still hanging around the same area

I'm still trying to get an answer as to why "non-native" birds are "trash", while humans get a free pass. Would anyone like to answer? As far as feeders go, the most signifant reason people have feeders in their yards, birders or non-birders, is for their own entertainment. I could care less how many different types of birds people "get to see" in their yards! Animals do not exist on this earth for the purpose of human entertainment. They are here for their own reasons. As far as rehabbing indivisual birds goes, I have rehabbed several birds who flew into my window and were knocked unconcsious. I do it to help out an animal that needs medical care, which I would do for any aniaml or person I saw injured, not because I want to preserve the existance of some taxonomical abstraction. Sorry but your words sound very callous and cold-hearted. You may not be specifically saying you want Starlings torutured, but your attitude towards them is what has spurned the latest craze I see in the conservation movement, which is this focus on the blaming and killing of other animals in the name of saving "native species" rather than habitiat preservation and drastically reduced consumption of resources. I don't believe it's the place of humans, the most non-native and destructive of them all, to determine which animals live and which ones die, while we do everything to ensure the life of every human is as long and pain-free as possible. It's just plain hypocritical and unethical.