Wow I would love some Yvonne's Salvia, too. I have seen photos of it, and it is gorgeous. Does it reseed? I know it's not root hardy here. I am planning on planting several new Salvias next year, e.g., S. regla, S. darcyi, S. microphylla 'Red Velvet', S. miniata, and a couple others, for the hummers and the Cloudless Sulphurs that love red flowers. They are big enough butterflies to get nectar from Salvias. It is good to know the birds will benefit, too. I plan to order 2 or 3 from Steve Owen at Bustani Plant Farm, and a few from Rich Dufresne at A World of Salvias. He has a website but if you e-mail him you can get an updated availability list and he is great at answering questions. Dawn, Cardinals are notorious window whackers! At my doctor's office, there is a glassed-in area and while I wait for my appointment the Cardinals are constantly hitting the glass. I don't know how they survive the trauma! I have actual, live cats who love to sit in my big living room window, so I haven't had any problems with birds there for sure. Our new baby, Cuddles, a black and white medium hair cat with gorgeous markings (our rescue from the Animal Shelter, as all of them are) really loves to watch the birds in that window. Since it is new to him, the other cats have had to take a back seat to his "window shopping" - "I'll take that one.....and that one....and that one". I love my 4 boys! But, they are strictly indoor cats, so we have a "no catchey birdy" policy. You guys, yesterday a hawk or something very, very large flew over and perched on the top of a telephone pole. It was still around in the late afternoon. The wing span must be at least 4 feet! I am surprised to see it in the city! Susan

Yep, Kendra is right about the sparrows. Oh and as far as taking too long to get the worms out, most Blues need to be trained to go to a feeder. They aren't normally feeder birds so they won't check out feeders looking for worms. You have to train them by putting a dish under where they normally perch, they will see the movement and drop down on it. Once they know you have worms in a dish for them however, then you can move the dish to where you want it.

I only get a few House Sparrows here but would find a horde of them intolerable and would remove the feeders (especially during the summer/fall, when food is more abundant for birds). There are more active measures you can take if you are willing. I have a BB gun but have never been able to hit one, however I have trapped a few with an inbox trap when Bluebirds were nesting in my yard. I would definitely remove the English Sparrow nests and discourage them from nesting in the Arborvitaes. Another thing I read you can do, is flush the birds from the arborvitaes on very cold nights. They will be unlikely to find new cover after dark and will be vulnerable to predators and hypothermia.

Unfortunately there is no way to get rid of them except by trapping them. They have 3-4 broods a year and will take over a yard in no time. They are very aggressive and as you witnessed will destroy tree swallow eggs and even kill the adults and babies as well as bluebirds. I used to monitor my tree swallow house and not allow any house sparrows to nest in the box. I used to plug the hole until the swallows returned and then would chase away any sparrow that had thoughts of nesting in the box. Unfortunately I had to trap them as I had a small urban yard and would have 50+ sparrows in the yard, especially in the winter. When you have that many sparrows, you won't get much of anything else. Once I kept the population under control, I didn't have a problem anymore and each year my swallows were very successful. The last year in our house there, there were six babies and they all fledged successfully.