Suzy - I usually worry about the dirt under my fingernails but now you've got me worrying about feet of clay! You are the professional gardener who tosses off botanical names that send us all scurrying off to learn about the plants that you are growing! So don't be in awe of any expertise - I am sure that Paula and Pamela feel the same - although we will gladly share any knowledge that we have while we interrogate you in turn, Mostly, it would be so nice to meet you. We're not sure how best to make this work. We are going to Mottisfont by bus from Winchester and have a full day of lectures on the 24th. We could definitely be free for dinner that evening, but easiest for us would be to meet in Winchester if you aren't attending the conference. I had thought about staying late in the garden, if it's open late (which appears not to be guaranteed - closing time is 5 pm per website), and walking to the train station and taking the train back to Winchester that evening, but don't know that will work out. It's certainly more complicated than simply piling on the bus and being returned to our lodgings. I think it would be good to continue this discussion by email, including Paula and Pamela. Mine is anitac 5159 @ gmail.com. (No spaces.) I'll give you my cell phone number, too, which should work in the UK. I'll be there this Friday, 30 June - the others will be coming later. Anita

I love all these photographs, I can look at them nonstop all day long. I live out in Western MA and have a few feeding stations up, one that contains BOSS and Safflower seeds, a thistle sock and a double suet feeder. Lately my feeders are packed with different song birds, chickadees, titmice, pine siskins, finches, white breasted nuthatches, dark eyed juncos, male and female cardinals, although I believe there's only one male cardinal that I keep seeing and along with the two females. I also get occasional house sparrows but lately, they seem to be staying away. I have a bluebird house up in hopes of luring a pair to my yard to raise a family but I'm not keeping my hopes up. Yesterday I was home for the day and sitting in my living room and out my bay window in the front across the street, were two Pileated Woodpeckers, the first I've ever seen. They were working on this one tree for about 2-3 hours, one on each side of the tree and they managed to do a fantastic job carving out a couple of cavities, I was very impressed at how hard they worked. Only wish my camera had a better lense. I've had red bellied, downie and hairy woodpeckers at my suet feeders but never was lucky enough to witness a pileated so close and two for that matter, it was very exciting. Please keep the pictures coming, I so enjoy looking at them and love to hear that there are bluebirds not to far from where I live. Fingers are crossed that they come to visit my yard in the spring. Linda

April 3 is the end (of counting, anyway - the feeders stay up for me). sooey: I always have low numbers of chickadees and titmice; It's rare for me to see three at a time. They're in the woods here, so I don't know if I have 50 birds coming single-file or whether most of them don't bother with the feeders. They almost always swoop in to grab a bite and then eat it in a nearby tree. Sometimes I can tell if there's two by the direction they come in (one from the left, one from the right, one from the left, one from the right....) It's interesting also that all three of us have roughly equal numbers of Pine Siskins and American Goldfinches. During the big siskin invasion the goldfinch numbers went way down, as if they had left the premises. Now that there are fewer siskins the goldfinches have come back. The first few times I got equal numbers I worried that I was miscounting the birds and I obsessed over counting with field glasses and photographing them, but I finally decided the numbers were correct. Maybe this is some sort of a natural balance of what each species will tolerate nearby? and/or the capacity of the sock feeders? There are mixed flocks at the socks, but usually the goldfinches come first and then the siskins later. On another note, I'm wondering about the capitalization of bird names issue. I have no problem with capitalizing American Goldfinches and Pine Siskins as definitive names, but I would prefer to just say goldfinches and siskins as generic terms. Besides, it's a pain to capitalize and type out the full name when there's no confusion as to what I'm talking about. What do you guys think? Claire (who is known as claire on GW where there's only one of me with this particular name. If there were other GWclaires, it would be different....)

Thankfully I've seldom had to deal with grackles and starlings, but when they have appeared, chasing them off with a Viking yell and a broom eventually seemed to drive them away permanently, as well as entertaining my neighbors. Of course it probably helped that I never ground feed, had no platform or other feeders they could access, and the vast majority of spilled seed was Nyjer, which they can't eat. So - slim pickin's, combined with crazy broom-wielding lady = starling-grackle-elimination-success! Taking it a step further, when I eliminated all mixes and went to feeding one kind of seed per feeder (sunflower seeds in one, nyjer in the other), many other pests stopped coming by. Apparently millet is much-beloved of several pesky species. Finally, switching to clingers-only feeders eliminated the mob of English house sparrows that had taken over my yard last year, driving off ALL the other birds, including the hummers. This year I may see one or two HOSPs going after spilled seed but they never stay long. The hummers have never returned, though.