Have 7 bluebird houses currently all occupied. 2 Owl houses so far no screech owls but I hear them in the woods along with my resident hoot owl family, the largest about 15 inches tall. Always have hawks sitting in the trees along the fields waiting for the mice and voles to show their nasty head. Have a wren currently sitting on 5 eggs in one of the small gourds I put in the little greenhouse for them over the winter. Lots of cardinals and every other song bird. Got a mockingbird nesting someplace. Yellowhammers in the field beside me. A covey of Bob White Quail I see in the woods behind me sometimes. Had a couple of Canada Geese in the pond awhile back. Also have a Kingfisher that hits the pond in the afternoon, have to chase off a great blue heron every couple of days and sometimes have a green heron at the pond and last but not least Charlie Chaplin The cockatiel that I bought my wife before we got married almost 17 years ago that is still talking away and whistlin Anchors Away I came back from 6 months at sea before I retired to listen to that!

Hey Matt Maybe you can help me identify a bird I saw yesterday. I don't know if it is a resident or just passing through. It is a yellow bird (like a goldfinch) about 5 inches (the size of a wren, maybe) with a large black mask across it's eyes. Tried to identify it from the birding websites on the internet, but wasn't too sure. The closest ID I could find was a black and white warbler, but that seemed to have too much black and white.

Nice! I'm looking forward to spring as well. Here's my back yard. This is last fall after I finished planting the back of the yard. It's on the edge of the property looking toward the house. In the foreground are two nannyberry shrubs (a viburnum related to cranberry) and then an area where I've planted a prairie garden and covered it with compost. You can see where I've left space for a path to walk through, and I plan to put a bench there. Back towards the house there is where the garden starts, and I had started planting there last year. It's nice in the summer sitting out on the patio, where I can watch the bird feeders and enjoy being surrounded by native plants. The area where I'm standing, with the nannyberry and the small post right beyond it, used to be completely infested with buckthorn and many invasive weeds. It took me 2 years to clear it all out. Now that the area is opened up a bit, I'm hoping that I'll have bluebirds nesting again (saw many here during fall migration.) I left this post standing as a spot for the bluebirds to perch, and to hang a nice sign. The post used to be completely obscured by buckthorn.

Don't know if you have a bear problem. I have property bordered by a large state park that I visit every other weekend. Can't have feeders up when I'm gone, so habitat restoration is an issue. Am sticking to planting trees and necter plants with high wildlife value. There are no starlings, house sparrows or house wrens so cavity nesters are plentiful. Check with your state DNR. State your objective (wildlife preservation) and you will get the local info you need as well as what to plant. You may even have a program in your state to allow you to put your property in a stewardship program in order to get a tax break. The big thing is selective thinning of forest to encourage understory plants. Linda