Good Morning everyone. I placed a call to the rescue center this morning and left a msg...waiting for a reply I checked out the pic of the bobwhite and it doesn`t match but the pic of the nothern rough-tailed swallow is very close. The differences are that it does not have the black band across the eyes and it doesn`t have the needle like ending to the tail feathers but the overall shape, size and color are very close. My initial thought when I say the bird was that it was a swallow because of the wings. I looked this bird up on google and it is on the rare bird site. We sit at night and watch these little guys dance throught the sky in groups. This year is the first year that I have seen these so they must be new to our area or the population is growing. I live in the heart of a large city across the river from Detroit MI. I will keep looking on google and will post if/when I get an answer from the rescue center. Well I just got a call from the rescue center and the little guy did not make it.....:( She said that he may have been bleeding interally...all we saw was the bleeding from his foot....may have been attacked by a cat??? She did ID him for me and he was a Chimney Swift. I google this and the pic is exactly what he looked like. Thank you everyone for helping. Louise

There probably isn't going to be anything other than the sunflowers in your seed mix that you would want to grow. The round seeds you mention are most likely millet - that and anything else that germinates is going to be too weedy to have garden value.

It could have been the nest of American Crows and they left the debris on the ground. I checked the Birds of North America online site (I can't link to it because it's a subscription site, but I hope it's OK to quote from it) - Great site, well worth joining. If you participated in the GBBC you get a free trial subscription. Apparently crows sometimes pull living twigs off trees to make their nests, and they line them with various materials including bark strips. From Birds of North America online site: "Nest Construction Both sexes build nest; no information on relative share of each sex. Although both sexes bring in nest-lining material, female does more of detailed fine-tuning of nest lining than does male (CC). Builds nest mostly between 07:00 and 11:00 (S. S. Dickey in Gross 1946); early in morning, as early as 8 min after sunrise (Reaume 1987b); likely throughout day (CC), as in Northwestern Crow (Verbeek and Butler 1999). New nest distinguishable from old one by presence of fresh, dead twigs on ground below; these twigs fall accidentally and are never retrieved (Reimann 1942). In Encino, CA, and Stillwater, OK, pulls and breaks off living twigs from trees as well as picking up twigs from ground (CC). Gathers materials from different directions around nest tree, not from nest tree itself (Reaume 1987b). Helpers in Florida (Kilham 1989), Cape Cod, MA (Chamberlain-Auger et al. 1990), and in Oklahoma (CC) participated in bringing material to the nest. With 2 adults and several helpers bringing sticks, the congestion around the nest resulted in birds having to wait for a chance to get to the nest; helpers usually left their sticks for the female to work in (Kilham 1989). Period between completion of nest and egg-laying in Florida 6Â16 d (Kilham 1989), but Emlen (1942) reported building right up to egg-laying in California. Time to complete first nests in California 13 d (range 11Â17, n = 6 nests [Emlen 1942]; 10Â14 d [CC]); 5 and 9 d in 2 nests with helpers in Florida (Kilham 1989), 10Â14 d in Oklahoma (CC). Second nests take less time to build: 9 d (Emlen 1942); 6Â8 d (Graber et al. 1987); 5Â10 d in California and Oklahoma (CC). Structure And Composition Matter Bottom and sides consist mainly of dead branches, 0.6Â3.5 cm diameter (Reimann 1942) and usually Claire

In what part of the country are you located, and could you take a photo of this bird? We have red-winged blackbirds here in PA. but the red is on it's shoulder and it has buff-yellow tips. The bird book describes it as epaulettes. Three other birds I found with some of your description are the Lark Bunting (state bird of Colorado, nest in sagebrush plains), the Painted Redstart (foothills and mtn. canyons of southwest, native to Mexico) and the Rose-Breasted Grosebeak, the male being described as black head and back with a rosy red wing lining and white rump (northeast and central USA and into Canada and beyond). Jane