To all posters: especially Jillmcm an vonyon, thank you so much for your input on this subject. I live in a wooded area. I love watching all the wildlife,- turkey, deer, and especially the birds, we have blue bird, martin and wren houses, and several bird baths. I have suet feeders, finch feeders, and a hopper feeders, along with several bird baths. I enjoy the birds so much, and spend many hours watching them. Then last summer a pair of phobees built a nest on a window sill on the second floor of our house. What a delight! They would swoop down and eat tons of insects. When I saw a hawk in a tree next to our house eyeing the baby phobees, it was too much, I went over the edge. I was obsessed with how to keep them out of our yard. All of the posts on this forum have been so helpful to putting things in balance. I am going to rethink my pattern of feeding the birds. Although the Phobees don't eat at bird feeders,they do use the bird baths, and the mere fact that there is a concentration of birds, attracted the hawks. By the way, the hawks nested in the woods next to us, and I heard the baby hawk calling after it's mother for food and say them hunting together, so I know they have to eat too. Thank you, again!

One thinks of a heron as a slow, deliberate stalker...if this was a crow chick, I wonder if it was still in the nest or maybe out on a limb or even on the ground. If the move was made on a chick still in the nest high in a tree this would totally rewrite the way I think of herons going about getting their meals. As many pairs of crow eyes as there are back there, this was one bold heron thanks for the link...I'm on dial-up so YT is a pain for us, but I will set it up late one night and let it download this one.

i chose chrome for faucet and potfiller. for the exact reason you stated. more timeless.... and finally something i wanted was the cheaper version of itself. it's also attractive. i like shiny things. i'm a crow like that. my appliances are ss and i have white cabs, black and white tile floor on diagonal, and wicked white granite on island, absolute black on perimeter. white subway tile bs.

PacNorWreck, Do you leave seed heads on your plants? I am not a very tidy gardener - lol - but have always left seed heads on almost all my plants and have many varieties of birds that live in my trees and the neighbors. I have a hummingbird feeder that hosts about 6 different Anna's but of course not at the same time. We found that the shy Stellar Jays will come right up on the deck for stale bread and don't leave any for rodents. We also have several returning little birds - think they might be chickadees that find spaces in the pots on the deck to make their nests. There are owls and we hear and see them in the day and hear them at night. We no longer have a dog and the cats in the neighborhood seem to just use our property for access to the other neighbors. Do you have pets that roam freely? I also put out small bunches of lint from the dryer filter here and there on branches and in planters and it disappears and then can be found as padding in the nests. Many of the nests are quite low - 1 - 2 ft from the ground - and the birds seem to know that they are safe. They are particularly fond of the herb planters and once they start the nests we stop watering the plants so we don't disturb them. Good for the birds, bad for the rosemary and thyme! lol We don't use insecticides - garden has a great - bad bug vs good bug - ratio so we don't need them. Late summer the nasturtiums get aphids and after using water spray for a month or so, we know it is time to pull them out. Good luck getting them to come into your garden.