In my case, the Junco are still around, but they don't come as often, usually only early in the morning and late in the evening. During the day, I usually get a lone Junco instead of a flock. The gel things are worked pretty well. I have had a lot of birds flocks fly toward the window and then part before they reach the window. Thought it looks like of silly. Paul

It's not my invention, it's basically a variation of the magic halo, which has been available for quite some times. You can see description at: http://www.sialis.org/halo.htm Unfortunately, the ring is not so effective against breeding pairs of HOSP. The site does have various ideas to deter nesting. I don't have experience with repelling grackles and starlings from nestboxes, but I do notice that starlings do not like to have something that block their view of the sky. A dome of some sort over suet feeder for example seems to deter them. However, it's hard to verify since Starlings don't seemed to come to my yard. Paul

Angie: I didn't really see much yellow near the eyes but my local bird guru from the Manomet Center said that the yellow lores are often indistinct and that the plumage varies greatly between individuals. He also saw a Savannah Sparrow yesterday in Manomet, about 6 or 7 miles north of me. They were here again today although the sun wasn't. Here are the two Savannah Sparrows with a White-throated Sparrow and a bunch of Dark-eyed Juncos. I'm hoping they stay around for my next Project FeederWatch count which starts on Monday. That nyjer seed path really attracts sparrows (and turkeys). I saw an American Tree Sparrow there this morning also. I started broadcasting the nyjer because I have a few hanging nyjer feeders there for the goldfinches and I noticed mobs of small birds underneath the hangers. Claire

I live in N.E.Ohio and I grew up on a dairy farm where we simply classified sparrows as house sparrow, field sparrow, or song sparrow, all of which we considered a minor nuisance because they constantly got into our grain bins. Since I retired last June I have taken up nature photography as a retirement hobby, and here again, those darn nuisance sparrows keep popping into the shot when I trying to get a picture of the more popular birds. But once I had the pictures I began to notice a lot more variations so out of curiosity I got a field guide, Birds of Ohio by McCormac & Kennedy Published by Lone Pine Press. The book lists 23 species of sparrows that are native to Ohio, and although I always thought a house sparrow was a native species I discovered that it is technically defined as an "Old World Sparrow", which is not native but rather it was introduced into North America from Europe. With a little bit more research I discovered that there are 63 species of sparrows that are native to North America & Canada and another 37 species of Old World Sparrows and 43 of the 63 native species and nearly all of the Old world sparrows frequent the Great Lakes Region. Needless to say, I am now looking at sparrows in a new light, and i have spent many hours photographing the lowly sparrow. To date I have documented 19 species in my yard, all confirmed by an Ornithologist from Ohio state University Extension Service.