Tony, I'm with you. I have never had any luck with suet of any type or recipe in Florida. I DO think you are more likely to succeed with it in cooler weather because the birds need a much higher energy type food then. And also because many types of suet cakes and mixtures spoil quickly in the heat. But even in winter, my woodpeckers prefer to eat sunflower seeds directly from the tray feeder, and they ALL ignore the suet. I do buy the big SEED cakes (BirdOla, etc) that just look like lots of seeds, peanuts and fruit somehow molded into a large square. You probably know what I mean...there's no suet that you can see, just the seeds & fruit bits. I put that in a wire holder designed just for it, and the goldfinches will eat from that, until it gets too small for their short beaks to reach it through the wire. They still drop shells and a little bit of seed under the feeder, but they can't fling it all over while looking for something they like, so it's much less messy. My goldfinches finally showed up about 3 weeks ago, and I've had as many as 30 in the yard at once. There are at least 4 that are almost completely yellow and black now. Just gorgeous. I haven't seen any buntings or grosbeaks this year, though. And the chipping sparrows left right when the goldfinches showed up. But I'm happy...I have my cardinals back, my white-winged doves are here, and my goldfinches. My seed-eating catbird and my seed-eating Myrtle warbler both left, after stuffing themselves for several weeks. (They obviously didn't get the memo telling them they prefer insects and fruit.) I'm really happy now that the squirrels can't seem to reach the feeders any more. (Still knocking wood, though.) Try one of the big seed cakes and see if you like it! Marcia

Scully, yep - we are a bit warmer here, but it's the overnight hard freezes that crack birdbath basins. On cold winter days, if I notice an ice skim forming, I'll add warm water too, but if I'm gone for the day the risk of freezeover escalates. The heater works 24/7. We've had a warm fall too, but if the Old Farmers Almanac is right, once it gets here, we're in for it this winter. Btw - Everytime I open this thread I get a mental picture of Woodstock ice skating on the birdbath - brings a smile to my face ....... thanks! Another little aside is that in the heat of summer, I take a pitcher full of ice cubes out to the birdbath - the flapping about definitely increases when I cool it down! :o) Love my birds!

My first thought was to say blackbirds, but I don't think there are any blackbirds, even immature ones, with very distinctive spots like that. Could they be starlings? Check out the link below. There's good info on the Identification and the Life History tabs. If it's either blackbirds or starlings, they're both nuisance birds. Will eat you out of house and home--and seed, and very "dirty" birds---a/k/a: poop all over the place! I haven't seen any starlings around here, but for the last couple weeks I've had a HUGE herd of brewer's blackbirds around. Couldn't keep 'em chased away no matter what I did! They'd fly up into the trees and sit up there laughing at me till I came back inside! Had to finally let the feeders "big birds" can access get empty and just stay that way! In the last couple days they seem to have disappeared again. The one possible problem I see with yours being a starling is that they have yellow beaks and in the pic it looks like yours has a black beak. Maybe that's just the pic! The "top" bird on the birdbath looks like a robin to me--right shape and has its head up like they do when they're drinking, but the pic is too dark to be sure of anything. Here's a link to the brewers blackbird so you can do some checking if/when they come back. These two pages also link to other "similar species." If you don't have a bird book--or two, Cornell All About Birds is a great site to look them up! http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brewers_Blackbird/id Hope this helps you, Skybird Here is a link that might be useful: European Starling - All About Birds

I almost posted an observation along these lines several weeks ago. In a one-week span I noticed three separate cowbird chicks all being attended to by blue-grey gnatcatchers. There was always a single cb chick to each set of birds, and never any sign of additional BGGC chicks vying for the food. In that same time span I also noticed a CBchick being fed by a pair of indigo buntings. It's not hard to find them as they are very raucous and conspicuous. I am curious how the numbers and densities of birds most typically affected by CB predations are doing here because we have hordes of cowbirds, yet I always hear/see vireos and thrushes and others that are prime targets for parasitism. I check my nest boxes regularly and destroy any CB eggs in the hopes that at least my small wooded acreage can better sustain songbirds in a time of decline, but we live in farmland with any remaining wooded areas being highly fragmented. Flocks of winter 'blackbirds' are usually groupings of redwings, starlings, grackles and cowbirds fattened up on a steady and readily available farmland diet. I only wonder what our songbird demographics will do in the next few decades.