Randy, It sounds like you get to enjoy a lot of birds too. I've been meaning to make up a list of the ones I get here, but I still haven't done it. I know there are pretty many. We live next to a woods and are not far from the mountain, and I guess that's what the hawks and owls like. I always hear screech owls and GHO's in the woods, but I've never gone looking for any of the nests. That's really neat that you know where the owls nest at your place. There aren't any cottonwoods here but thousands (more like millions) of others. I've never gotten any pictures of the owls. One evening one flew by not too many feet above my head (like maybe 20 at the most) and I didn't even hear it. I guess it was on its way to get its next meal. Maryann, You seem to me to know pretty much, so if you say you know little, then I guess that gives you a clue how much I know! lol I can identify pretty many birds, but I just haven't gotten a handle on hawks yet. One bird I would love to see is a red-headed woodpecker (never saw one in my life). We have other types here, one of which is the Pileated. It likes to go to the white pine tree in our yard that is slowly dying. I don't have it cut because of that. We also have a bird tree that's seen its better days, but birds nest and roost in the holes in it, so I don't have that one cut either. That would be nice for you to join a local bird club if you have the time. I'm not a member of any local bird club but go on songbirdsfamily.com It's one of those My Family sites where you email them your name and email and they give you a password to get on the site. You can post pictures right on the site and don't have to use photbbucket or anything like that. That's why I didn't know how to post pictures on this butterfly site at first because I never had to do that before, but now I learned that in addition to learn so many things about butterflies. I hope those hawks at your place get the house sparrows and starlings and leave the native birds alone. There are so many starlings around here and only a couple hawks once in awhile that I count on my traps and air rifle to get rid of them here. At first when I heard of other people doing that, I thought it was mean until I heard stories and saw pictures of what they do to our native birds. A lot of birding groups are encouraging people to destroy the house sparrows are starlings. Like you, I'm not fond of the grackles either for the reason you mentioned, but being that they're a native species, I just have to let them alone and grumble as I have to go out yet again to fill the feeders. Yes, I think you're right about that and it could have been either a hawk or a cat that got your cardinal. I've learned a lot about birds on other forums and enjoy them a lot, and one of my friends on there would talk about butterflies sometimes and I thought to myself, "Now that's something else that sounds interesting and I ought to look into it!" That's why I came here. Now I have more nice people to "talk" to. :) I'm sure I couldn't have learned so much about butterflies anywhere else either.

Thank you roselee -- Several of us have been tossing this around. I thought at first that I had immature and mature birds of one species ... but when the presumed sharp-shinned showed up again, on 8-16-14 . . . I knew I must have two different species. Now, to figure out which of the two species nested across the street here, in 2013 . . . :-)

Immature Cooper's I think but to differenciate the Cooper's from the sharp-shinned is so difficult in real life...all seem so easy in books. both the sharp-shinned and the Cooper's immature have streaked breast and pale eye BTW.

Luc I think you may be right. I think I saw a mature Cooper's Hawk Sunday. I studied it, but studied the wrong things. It had a dark back & head with dark cheeks. The pictures in my guides show this cheek only on the Cooper's. Because of the branches I wasn't able to tell if the end of the tail was rounded or not just that it was clearly striped. And it was quite large, much larger than a blue jay. So do you think it was Cooper or Sharp-shinned?