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.

Its mostly likely a Juvenile Cooper's Hawk, they mainly eat birds. The juveniles in particular seem to be attracted to the commotion of a feeder. While full grown ducks are not usually targeted, they are at risk. Coopers are known to kill other big birds like chickens and pheasants. There was a recent special on Crows on PBS with researchers tagging crows with radio transmitters. Some of the transmitters ended up at the back in a Coopers nest. In the midwest, their favorite food is doves, but will eat anybird that visits your feeders. A couple of weeks ago, I saw one chase a finch and catch it after several figure eights through the trees. It was very impressive to see such a big bird chase a little bird and catch it.

Nathan, It is neglible. You must always include two factors other than the gross numbers eaten by the raptors. The first factor is the range or territory the raptors hunt in. If it's just 100 acres, the removal of 3000 rodents can be suppressive of rodent numbers. But if hunting occurs (as it does for larger raptors) over many square miles, the removal of a few thousand mice, voles, or lemmings is only a small fraction of the entire population of the large hunting area. The second factor, totally unaccounted for in popular characterizations of the effects of raptors on prey populations, is the ability of rodents to reproduce, especially after loss to predators. Yes, 3000 lemmings (or voles or mice, or whatever) sounds like a lot of animals. It is. But how long does it take for the rodents to replace an individual lost to a raptor? Since rodents reproduce in just weeks, and in great numbers, the effects of owl or hawk predation is essentially nil. In fact, population ecology strongly suggests that raptor predation of rodents merely opens new, isolated "holes," places where a few hundred square feet have no mouse or vole because a hawk grabbed the one that lived there. (Yes, I know, they live socially, but the effects are the same.) Raptor predation merely creates opennings for copius numbers of young rodents to fill. In short, rodents reproduce faster than hawks can kill them. If rodents produced only a single brood or two each year, raptors could, indeed, "control" them. But they don't. They breed time after time, producing multiple offspring each time. And because all raptors have large hunting ranges, they simply can't control small rodent populations. It was a nice way to get people to believe that hawks should be protected because they controlled mice and rats that eat human food. But authentic understanding of both the hunting frequencies and ranges of hawks, compared to the massive reproductive capacities of rodents (the neglected factor), show that hawks can't possibly "control" rodent populations in any effective way. There are too many mice, voles, rats, and lemmings, and worse yet, the little blighters simply reproduce too fast for a local pair of raptors to keep up. And by the way, I've done extensive food consumption research on the food requirments of red-tailed hawks. They do not require "large amounts of small mammals in order to survive." They actually require about 125 grams of flesh each day. That's four or five voles. At the maximum (5 voles x 2 hawks x 365 days), a pair of red-tails can consume 3650 voles a year. Most red-tails have hunting ranges of 2 or more square miles. There is no way the removal of a mere 3650 voles from a two-mile square area could even be detected. There will be tens of thousands of voles left un-hunted, all of which are producing new broods of voles every 4-6 weeks or less for most of the year.

this is a breeding pair, so they should be the same. the underside shot on #4 just didnt show the color variation. i have a 5 mp dig cam with 12x and that was the best it would do from the distance. it is strange how much size dif there is in the pair.