The male pine grosbeaks are such beauties, aren't they? Lately I've noticed that the 4 males visiting my yard seem brighter, or redder. They must be getting geared up for a date and a bit of nookie! I had no idea that grouse went up into the trees. But I guess it makes sense - when everything on the ground is so snow covered, what else would they eat. We had nuthatches early in the winter - white breasted here at home and red breasted at work - but I haven't seen them since. DH saw an owl just outside of town a yesterday and from his description it sounds like a Great Grey. I want to go hunt him down, but it's been snowing pretty good since I got off work yesterday. Great photos, everyone.

Sorry but where ever or who ever you received your information has done no searching for the chicken or they/you would have found the breed is alive and well in this country. They are not a popular breed but at least at the Minnesota State Fair 3 years ago when I visited they there were several on display. Perhaps a more open thought process should be reviewed to expand the information data basis is in order. There are millions of things in the universe that people will not accept except on personal experience and study. Just because they are not accepted does not mean that they do not exist. Each day science adds more and more to our information on things that were thought to have vanished or never existed but are just now be rediscovered. I hope you have a good time learning about things in the future.

Don't anyone think that the red-tails will be able to reduce Central Park rats in any useful or significant way. I love red-tails and promote them any way I can. But I won't tell an ecological lie. Red-tails (nor any other hawk or owl) canÂt possibly reduce prey species to any useful or significant level. This un-truth has been used for decades as a reason to keep raptors from being shot. "Hawks control rodent populations!" is the ubiquitous cry. But in fact, they don't. They can't. How so? First, let's figure out how many rats Pale Male or Lola (or any other red-tail) could consume in a day. I keep a trained red-tail (for falconry) and I know exactly how many grams of rodent (or other) protein is needed to maintain perfect health. In the summer, when temps are high and metabolic needs low, a red-tail can easily subsist on a single nice rat each day. If Central Park has two adults and two eyasses (offspring) floating around, that's a loss of four rats a day. And just how many rats do you suppose occupy Central Park. It's not hundreds. It's multiple thousands. And they breed every few weeks or less. In short, there is no way the red-tails can make any discernable dent in the continuously abundant Norway rat population of NYC in general or Central Park proper. Even in spring, when the adults are capturing perhaps two rats a day for each eyass, with three eyasses on the nest that's six rats for the kids, and two each for the parents. That's ten rats a day, maximum. But the birds are also taking pigeons, reducing the pressure on the rat population. The same thing happens out in the countryside. My wild red-tails in rural northern Ohio have, on average, a 2-square mile hunting territory. Each adult has to capture two or three voles each day in the summer, and five or six in the winter. Let's say that's an annual average of four voles each day for each of the two resident hawks. That's 2920 voles. Round that off to an annual red-tail take of 3K voles in two square miles. Since vole populations can reach several hundred per acre, and a mile has 640 acres, it doesn't take a calculator to discern that red-tails have in their territories just a whole lot more crawling food specimens than they can ever reduce. And while the hawks are eating the voles or rats, the rodents are going about their business in rapidly reproducing. Actually, hawk predation on the rodents can facilitate the maintenance of high rodent populations, as for every rodent removed by a hawk, a new slot is opened for a new growing rodent. It might be said that the purpose of hawk predation on rodents is to provide space and food for growing, young voles and rats. Sorry to poke holes in a universal (but errant) ecological doctrine. It's all in the numbers, and they don't add up. Hawks, owls, (even cats) don't, even can't, control rodent numbers. Only rodent disease, poison, lack of food, water, or shelter can do this.

Wow, Cathy! I bet your brother's little corner of the world is a bird lovers paradise! Beverly, I had only ever seen a small screech owl in my parent's barn before we moved to the house we live in now. This place has been a nature-lover's dream! I do know how lucky I am to see all of the wonderful creatures we have living in our midst. Since we moved here, we have a resident black bear that hangs around every summer, we have seen possum, timberwolf, fisher, wild turkey, sandhill crane, peregrine falcon, red shouldered hawk, coyote, and numerous birds that we never had visit our feeders at other homes. We love it! Linda