Great pics patsi! I too have had minimal hummer activity. In the past, regardless of the racket the starlings made at the suet feeder, or the large number of goldfinches at my feeder and on the plants, I'm only seeing a hummer, once a week IF I'M LUCKY! I've only seen one male and one female. The last few years, I'd see at least one once a day. This year it's definitely killing me, not seeing them daily. I've had a robin nest in the forsynthia, which is only a few feet away from my feeder, and that never bothered my hummers. I haven't even seen a monarch butterfly yet! Overall, butterfly activity is alot less as well. Few cabbage whites, sparse Eastern Swallowtails, although I have seen a few Black Swallowtails that were kind enough to leave me a load of caterpillars, most of which have been eliminated, probably by wasps. I have already released 2 butterflies & have 5 more chrysalids & 2 more cats still feeding. At least the mosquito population is up (yes, sarcasm), but it's keeping the bats happy, which too, appear to have had their numbers dwindle too :(

I know you are going to think I am crazy, but I think the Grackle is a beautiful bird. However, I don't have Grackles around my place here in BA. I don't even know if they are numerous around here even tho I do see them occasionally in some parking lots, like Walmart. My son, in OKC, has them and despises them.

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.

Day's right. Cormorants don't have those long legs. It's probably his posture that's throwing you off. You usually see them standing more upright with the neck stretched out. BTW, McSix, cormorants do roost in trees. One of our favourite birding spots has an area where LOTS of them roost. We call the path below 'Ammonia Junction'. >:~] ICA, Sophie ^i^