Hi all, I haven't been on this site in ages! I am into genealogy now and spend way too many hours on those sites. However, I have been out in the yard the last couple of weeks - finally letting my husband cut back way overgrown areas and trying to see if we can redesign some areas. I have had three overwintering chrysalis emerge. Two were Giant Swallowtails and one was a Spicebush. Have seen a couple other Spicebush males around and a female did lay some eggs but I think they were duds. Sulphurs are around and my Polydamas are back. Saw a couple of Tigers around the yard for a few days too. Tom - did you have a good year for wintering hummers? I had two adult males banded in Jan. and an immature male that hung around all winter too. Still have one adult male who is still molting but I am not sure if its one of my banded ones or not. I don't think so. And there is an adult male that stopped by for a couple days now, guess he is migrating through. I have Goldfinches now and have had some surprises this winter. Parulas and an Orchard Oriole came through. We have a pair of Red Shouldered Hawks nesting in an oak tree in the next door neighbors yard. The male is having a good time roosting on people's cars if they have racks on the hoods. He likes to jump from one car to the next if two are parked in the same driveway. We think he likes sun roofs too. Guess he can see himself. Last spring we had a pair nest in one of our trees. They hatched two babies but one died. Evidently, the mother disappeared and the father tried to care for the one baby. Eventually he stopped feeding the fledging and we ended up feeding it raw chicken tenders as directed by a friend from Audubon. It stayed around long enough that it would come every day for lunch and dinner, landing in the same spot in the tree. After a while it went to once a day then every couple of days and then he disappeared. We knew it could hunt on its own as it would bring lizards and mice to the same tree and sit and eat. Sorry I got off track. Good to see Miss Sherry and tdogmom are still here too. Hi to everyone else too! Mary

Well, I finally figured out where the Orioles are nesting. They are not nesting in the Pin Oak again, but in the Linden tree on the other side of the house! After I noticed the female pulling on the fibers from the old nest, I decided to put out some more cat fur for her to use in the nest (Orioles will collect animal fur to line the inside of the nest). Every Spring in late March/early April I fill a large suet cage with cat fur. My sister has long-haired cats and she collected the fur when she brushes them. I "fluff" the fur up and put it in the cage and it's usually gone within a few weeks because the birds and even the red squirrels collect it for their nests. This time I only put out a little fur. The Tufted Titmouse and the Oriole female collected it all within 2 days. Here she is collecting tufts of fur that fell on the ground - And here she is bringing a little fur to the nest!

Sagrinin, I've never used dried mealworms or soft butter pellets. I have never heard of soft butter pellets. What are they? I use live mealworms and homemade suet. I sort of trained them by accident. I was growing mealworms over the winter so I'd have them available in the spring for the Blues. I had a mealworm feeder on my deck at the time, and I started putting in mealworms to see if any other birds would like them. A few other birds started using the feeder and one day the Bluebirds showed up. They simply followed the other birds into the feeder, and have known how to get to the mealworms ever since. I don't know where you live, but if the Blues can still get live insects on their own, they will continue to hunt for food. If everything freezes and they can't get insects in the winter, they may start taking your offering of dried mealworms. You may want to think about taking care of the HOSP before spring. If the Blues chose the box and the HOSP also want it, there could be trouble for your Blues come spring. If you can't trap, perhaps you could close up the boxes for now and hope the HOSP go away.

carolb, the x clears the ad in that moment, but the second you go back to yahoo, there it is. There was a way to turn them off, which I did a year or two ago, but for some reason, they're back.