The swallowtail kites are not likely after your baby mockers, earlybird. They eat on the wing and usually eat large insects, small snakes, lizards and things they snatch out of the treetops. They are without a doubt my favorite bird of prey, having the most beautiful markings and expressive faces of any, to my mind. And here is a shot of a STK eating...something GREEN...while flying. (Hopefully a Cuban treefrog!) Your wood stork photos are beautiful! Magnificent big ol' birds! Ya gotta love 'em! And brown thrashers are very common throughout most of the state. They are first cousins to mockingbirds. But many people never notice them, and since they don't normally come to feeders, they can be overlooked. (Mine have been coming to my feeders, however, ever since I started to use a mix with fruits and nuts in it.) Marcia

Yes, the mystery deepens! My neighbor has several bird feeders, and I have a large old concrete birdbath that I was cleaning out and refilling every couple of days during the record breaking hot summer. It was not uncommon to see 6+ different birds at the bath at one time. The area is sheltered with many mature trees and shrubs, especially spruce, hemlock, lilacs, viburnums breaking the winds that come in from the west. I live in an 1895 house in an old rural town (Big Rock, IL, Est 1834), with farm fields nearby as well as some prairie woodlands that have never been developed (aka ruined, LOL). I have seen other critters that I have not seen in decades when I lives 25 miles closer to Chicago. Preying Mantis, Luna and some Sphinx moths, even a Hellbender salamander digging into my burn pile (got relocated to the creek bank). And I'm still a novice. I'm wondering if these variables might have some species passing through at times that might otherwise not be considered "regular" In the Metro Chicago area? Just looked through a 1936 copy of Pearson's Birds of America and came away with few ideas. Purple Grackle seems similar, but what I saw was slimmer and not as iridescent. Similar thoughts about Blackbirds, Grackles and Purple Martins. The shape of the tail reminded me of male cardinals, but the birds were a bit smaller, about 3/4-7/8 the size. The white tail patch was only visible when the birds started to take off. I saw this more than once. It was kind of in the middle of the rump as opposed to the end of the tail. From what I saw of the birds, the underside was certainly a dark color as well. I looked through a few other birding books I have between the first and the last sightings, and nothing listed matched. I wondered if it/they might have been a lesser mentioned subspecies or a juvenile. Interesting....

Hi Rachel, Sorry - I live in eastern Massachusetts, 7 miles north of Boston and I live in a suburb with a little wooded area bordering my backyard, and a wildlife reservation and ponds about 1/2 a mile away (I am very fortunate!). It has been very cold here the last few days and we got our first dusting of snow yesterday. I have seen different kinds of birds here within a mile of the house - woodpeckers, hawks, swans, geese, the common feeder birds, we even have a heron who flies back and forth over our neighborhood every day - so we do get a variety of birds. We definitely do have house sparrows, but these little guys I saw yesterday were not those. They were just about a solid brown from where I could see. No striping or definitive marks. They just hopped around eating stray sunflower seeds. I've gone through photos of species, both genders and juvenile appearances, on the internet and in my books, and I am not sure what this bird was. The only even remote possibilities I could come up with were: field sparrow; junco; and female indigo bunting. If you have thoughts on this I would be most appreciative. Thanks, Donna P.S. Your last set of photos was, as always, astounding. Congrats on your new lifer!

I see no orange on this bird, either. I thought, first thing, "Crested Caracara," then "Northern Goshawk," based on its overall coloring and the habitat. The habitat seems wrong for a Caracara, but we had one visiting us in redwood country not long ago, eating at several deer carcasses along Highway One and the bird appeared several weeks later (assuming it was the same one) in Oregon. . . While a Northern Goshawk *would* be feathered farther down on the legs, take a closer look at this photo, then turn to page 190 in the NGFG, and check out the feathering on the legs of the Goshawk (imm) in the painting: the feathers are farther down, yes, but they are sweeping back, as in the bird in the photo. A Northern Goshawk *would* go after prey as large as a squirrel. I sincerely doubt a Cooper's would take prey that large. . .