There's nothing quite as cool-looking(temperaturewise) as BLUE flowers. I grew Phacelia a few years ago, best blue i ever saw, next to cornflowers. The bell-shaped blue flowers with icy-white anthers were beautiful, and stirred up images of cooler weather. They do have a short bloom time, hot weather just about stops the show, cutting back helps somewhat. Give 'em a try, i believe there are 2 or 3 varieties. Good luck, and enjoy.

I was living in town when Mr. Walski was giving talks about the wild turkey project. Although the article describes the CT River valley, I think there were other release sites that weren't mentioned. I thought our town was one of them because of the corn, apples and water. We don't have apple orchards any more but although we are down to one dairy farm, a neighbor has quite a few beef cows (and lots of manure). We used to enjoy seeing the turkeys roost in pines along a corn field. As day was ending, they would gather and one by one fly up into the trees. The cattle farmer made improvements to the field since years of not keeping up with things let trees encroach on the field. About 100 feet of pines were cut back. There are plenty more pines but too much heavy equipment activity. The heavy equipment is now parked a distance away and finally we saw three male turkeys in our yard and then exploring the corn field. Last winter we counted as many as 60 coming down from the pines to see what they could get in our yard before making the tour to other places. I don't recalled seeing blue birds in winter before but this year we probably have 8. I counted 4 females and one male picking up suet scraps and thistle seed. We do not have nesting boxes up so I have no idea where they nest but it is probably somewhere behind our house. Thanks for posting the wonderful pictures. A friend has been getting some good shots at the Nashua airport and posting them on facebook.

Mojo, I have seen a few hawk migrations, but nothing that spectacular. It's hard to say just how much was speculation or exaggeration, but I have no doubt, he did see perhaps a few hundred. Once upon a time, hawks were far more numerous than now. There were also more individual farmers, more chickens, sheep, pigs and even personal milk cows on each farm.....all of which relied on their respective feed. That feed attracted millions of rodents--food for most raptors. Only 3-4 species were ever truly chicken hawks. The Cooper's, goshawk, and merlin [formerly called "pigeon hawk"] and great horned owl were the real culprits. I used to have old issues from the '40's and '50's of Farm Journal and Farm Quarterly which had some really scary but true facts about which hawks were the true "chicken hawks." Yes, I really appreciate the editors of those magazines, even back then, urging our farmers NOT to kill the innocent species. Buteos were so often blamed for the kills if they were seen feeding on a bird or kitten actually killed by a GH owl or even another fur-bearing predator. This resulted in millions of hawks indiscriminately destroyed by people. Pesticides were another yet another issue. I really loved it the one time several migrating Swainson's literally filled the huge elm just outside my bedroom window in 1998 when I lived on a farm near Hugoton, Kansas. It was dusk. I went to the west side of the house and looked at another big elm further from the house, where Icould see the hawks and there were probably about 15-20 in that tree, too. In the 3 years I was there, I only saw this happen once. The biggest flock of raptors ever witnessed, again, only once, was a stream of turkey vultures flying to roost. their flock only mayby 20-40 feet across, but several miles long. It was the most curious flight pattern I had ever seen, but only turkeys...not a black in the bunch! They flew over my house or right by it en route! I estimated it took some 20 minutes for all the birds to pass. Totally awesome!

The Missouri Wildlife Code allows you to "take care of" most wildlife if it is damaging your property: Subject to federal regulations governing the protection of property from migratory birds (including raptors), any wildlife except white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, turkeys, black bears, mountain lions, and any endangered species which beyond reasonable doubt is damaging property may be captured or killed by the owner of the property being damaged, or by his/her representative, at any time and without permit, but only by shooting or trapping except by written authorization of the director or, for avian control, of his/her designee. Wildlife may be so controlled only on the owner’s property to prevent further damage. As native wildlife I'm okay with the idea of rabbits foraging in my yard. Unfortunately the natural predators that would have kept their numbers down are missing. I saw a coyote in the neighborhood late one night, but I think they rarely get this far into the city. It's probably too congested (trees, buildings) for hawks. One of my friends, from a farm in Wisconsin, tells a story about his dad taking care of a shoebox of kittens by placing it behind a big tractor wheel and backing over it. I guess you can't be too sentimental when you've got a lot of property to manage.