After trying to pay attention I am seeing birds with different color beaks but haven't paid attention to the tails so that will be my next thing to look after. I am believing that there are different types of birds around here now as there are some that have dark beaks and some with light, don't know about my fish thief though as I havne't seen it happen again. I have realized some have yellow eyes and some black but did not pay attention to beak color, again, at the same time as the eyes. I need to be more observant. There are also some that land on my feeder and eat and some that forage the ground and some that walk like pigeons with the bobbing head. I'm trying to pay more attention when I have spare times to sit and watch and tell the difference between the different types I'm seeing and their behaviors so maybe I can figure this out and learn more about what is in my yard. My first instinct was the martin because of the colonies and I always see them flying, as described (When I first moved here I thought they were some kind of hawk babies because of their flight). Now I'm realizing that there are more than one type of birds that I'm seeing.

Sounds like not enough greens. My piles suffer from excessive browns in part because theres just two of us and in part to be absolutely sure the smell stays down and the critters stay out. My piles were working really slowly since we had a really early winter with lots of snow so I put in a little commercial fertilizer. The working pile (the one I add to currently) lost half its size in about two weeks, I was amazed how fast it seems to be working, I turned it yesterday (the only time this pile has ever been turned) and its at the point the 8 month rested pile was at two weeks ago. I haven't dug into the other pile yet, it'll be interesting to see where its at.

What a treat! Thanks for sharing. I read such a discouraging article in the Chicago Tribune last week. It was about a bird tagging location near the Illinois/Wisconsin border that has been functioning for forty years. At first I thought the article said the number of birds had declined by ten to twenty percent, then...no, the number has declined TO ten to twenty percent of the migrating birds. They blame pollution and the declining habitat along migration routes. One of the tiny birds photographed had been recorded on migration from Northern Canada to South America. Our bird population has never come back more than a few percent from the die-off during avian flu a few years ago. I almost never see a crow or blue jay -- who thought I'd miss *them*?

Cheer you go. The Rasberry crazy ant or tawny crazy ant, Nylanderia fulva, is an ant originating from South America. Like the longhorn crazy ant (Paratrechina longicornis), this species is called "crazy ant" because of its quick, erratic movements. It is also called the "Rasberry crazy ant" in Texas after the exterminator Tom Rasberry, who noticed that the ants were increasing in numbers in 2002.[2][3] Scientists have had trouble identifying this ant as a species owing to confusion regarding the taxonomy of the genus, but it has now been identified as Nylanderia fulva.