I've got cardinals, mourning doves, goldfinches, sparrows, black capped chickadees, I hear blue jays but they've snubbed my feeders thus far... and I still have grackles and starlings showing up. I used to have downy woodpeckers but have not seen or heard them this year, and I have not seen any hummingbirds yet. I did laugh when my husband's friend (who was over for dinner yesterday) looked at my nyger feeder, pointed and told his son, "Look, there's an oriole!" It was a goldfinch. And, much to my dismay, we had a sparrow fly into the door yesterday morning and die. We have done everything to reduce this -- moved the feeder further to the right, away from the flightpath; put one of those bird stickers on the window; left the glass rain-spotted for a while to break up the reflection. We had gone a long time without any deaths.

If you locate the point on the map where Interstate 80 crosses the Ohio/Pa line I am exactly 3.5 miles S.W. of that point and we are having just the opposite here. I have at least 15 Cardinals here daily, and on one occasion i counted 25 as well as 15 to 20 Bluejays and a flock of about 40 Morning doves that come both morning and evening. I have seen as many as 6 Nuthatches on the hopper feeder at one time. To date I have photo documented 7 species of sparrows and the Tufted Titmice, Juncos and Chickadees are too numerous to count. the hopper feeder holds about 5lb of seed and I have to fill it at least twice a day, sometimes three times. About 6 feet from the hopper I have a suet feeder on the tree trunk and I have seen as many as three Downy Woodpeckers on it at one time, plus I have confirmed at least 4 Red bellied Woodpeckers, a couple Hairy Woodpeckers and on one occasion I saw a Pileated Woodpecker, although he was here and gone too fast to get a picture. I have two tube type Nyger feeders for Finches, which are attracting House Finches and Gold Finches, although we are not seeing as many Finches as usual. The last 50lb bag of bulk birdseed I bought seemed to have about 20% cracked corn in it. Most of the smaller birds are tossing the corn on the ground, but in the last two weeks I have noticed about 10 to 15 Wild Turkeys feeding on the corn in the dim light just before sunup and the Sparrows and Juncos seem to ground feed on it throughout the day, not to mention that we have had a few crows drop in. Yesterday I saw a flock of crows fly over and I couldn't believe it. It took almost 15 minutes for the full flock to pass. All in all, I would say we are seeing far more birds than usual this year. Fortunately we have an ideal environment for birds here. Our house is on a 5 acre lot which is surrounded with 60ft high pine trees on the perimeter, a small 3 acre cattail swamp on one side and a 25 acre open field on the other. One the opposite side of the cattail swamp there is a 35 acres open horse pasteur and all of that is surrounded by about 400 acres of old growth hardwoods. The houses on our road are about 1/4 mile apart, and I spend a lot of time hiking the area with my camera. In talking to the neighbors I have discovered that I am the only one within a mile either way that has bird feeders. As a winter project 5 guys at the Senior center have spent the winter building over 100 nesting boxes which we intend to hang throughout the woods area in the next two to three weeks.

great pics Dave,i've missed seeing your wonderful work. i'm confused as to how you post a pic that has 1024 pixel resolution when the forum only allows 61k? i've cropped and downsized a pic of my mystery nest to the point of being blurry and it still is 68k.

Ooooooo! Oooooooo!! I KNEW you wouldn't leave us here at the forum sad and deprived of your beautiful photos! I've been too concerned about disturbing fledglings to take photos of my own lately because frantic parents click at me when I even pass by on the trails, and with the 400mm lens I have to get fairly close and use a flash in the woods to have any kind of photo.