Ohh, too cool! It's so exciting when a new bird shows up and you got a picture too! I just bought a subscription to the Birds of North AMerica website and this is what they say about Eurasion Collared-Doves.... One of many successful species introduced to the North American fauna in recent history, the Eurasian Collared-Dove was first released in the New World on New Providence, Bahamas, in the mid-1970s. Since its introduction, this dove has spread quickly across the North American continent. Reports of this bird continue at a rapid pace as the public is made aware of its presence Fairly uniformly distributed in Florida, Georgia, and along the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Locally common in Alabama, Arkansas, sw. California, se. Colorado, and regions of Illinois, Kan-sas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, N. Carolina, Oklahoma, S. Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Reports of small numbers (1Â10 doves) from Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey, N. Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, S. Dakota, and Wisconsin, as well as Saskatchewan, Canada. May occur in Mexico; all sw. Texas counties have reported observations. ... But not in Ohio :^( There diet consists of .... In North America, seeds and cereal grain offered from bird feeders and spilled from agriculture. Includes seeds of millet (Setaria spp.), sunflower (Helianthus spp.), milo (Sorghum spp.), wheat (Triticum spp.), and maize (Zea mays). Reported also to take spilled peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) from warehouse (Drennen 1997), fallen pecans (Carya illinoensis) crushed by automobiles on road (Steele 1998), crackers, and bread (CMR). Same male observed eating berries directly from Dahoon holly (Ilex cassine) every day for a week in early Aug 2001 in s. Florida (CMR). Flocks seen feeding on gravel in parking lots in Florida (CMR). And thanks Brenda, I haven't had any new birds in awhile so it was fun to research something new!

Mystery solved? I sent a photo of the desk to the Auction house that had a picture of the same desk on Google. This reply arrived this morning: ""The desk that you have appears to be a late 19th early 20th century desk of mahogany. Desks similar to these were sold by a company caled Paine furniture amongst others. The block front design is very desirable. I would estimate this piece at between 2-3000 thousand dollars. With that said, it would increase considerably if the desk turned out to be earlier than what I described. However, I am quite sure of its age."" Again, thank you all for your input. We have another, (even older desk) but I will not bore you with pictures this weekend. :) ML

I tried to post last night, but I couldn't get in--anyone else have that problem? Anyway, sue, *thanks* for the picture of Blue Gray. It's gorgeous. I'm so drawn to this part of the spectrum, even though I don't like "blue" per se. The room is beautiful--both your and allison's pics look like they come from a beautiful book on color. I am trying to figure out how I can get F&B to my house...in the meantime, I found a BM color, "storm cloud gray", that is in the same realm as Pigeon--darker than the French or Blue grays. I am still working on finding any kind of approximation for the lighter colors. I know BM isn't the same at all--I can tell just from the photos you all have supplied. It's such a small room--maybe I'll just figure out a way to have some F&B sent to me and it will be my splurge...you know, unlike the rest of the house LOL...

Glad I am not the only one, we have two of them, wild but quite happy to just hang out at our place. They are teaching their two young ones to fly at the moment and have caused much excitment for the children, (11 & 3) who have watched mum engineer some strange platforms to prevent them falling out of the nest ( it was built up in the corner of the carport). They have only caused one problem, an identity crisis for our two "gun" dogs, yes, a retrievor and a lab !!!! The dogs are constantly landed on which severely disturbes their "busy doing nothing" time and I have even witnessed them step aside and let the birds eat from the food bowls. Oh the shame, I am glad for the 6 foot fences so they are not publicly ridiculed on their morning walks.