I am thrilled!! I mean super excited!! I just spotted my first pair of Baltimore orioles today!! My neighbor has has an oriole feeder out for several years but we've never spotted one. Now she is in a nursing home and hasn't had anything in her feeder and NOW they showed up. So I rushed around my house and found some thick copper wire, wrapped it around a small plastic cup, glued a yellow lid to the bottom and filled it with home made oriole sugar water mixture. Crossing my fingers that they come back! I'm going to make another feeder with hooks to stick on some orange wedges. These are such stunning birds. How I spotted them was I was cleaning our sons bedroom and saw them out the window on the tops of my dogwood tree jumping across the tops. They did this for several minutes. I then rushed down to my yard after they flew off to see if they were in my yard but no luck. I sure hope they return. Absolutely STUNNING birds!!

We just had a brood of nine ducklings pull from a sewer drain last weekend. Below is a pic of the officer who rescued them. The sanctuary is about a ten minute drive from my home. It's open from dawn to dusk, though I've been there a few times after dark on bat walks and such. It's very cool to be there at dust with hundreds of crows come in for the evening to sleep. See link below for photos. When our KT Casey came to town three years ago I took her there. Jodi- Here is a link that might be useful: Pics of San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary

Some do work as a team. One perches in a tree a little ways off while the other flushes out the birds from cover. The perched hawk will fly at the panicked songbirds and usually get one on the wing. There are also reports of them working together to flush birds and drive them into glass windows but I don't think this method is very common. I would guess the birds panicked and just flew into the glass while rushing to escape. These hawks are loathsome. If you feed, you may want to relocate the feeders to a covered area near a brush pile or inside a hedge. It wont stop the hawks but it may make it harder for them to catch a bird. And you really need to feed at least 30 feet away from any glass or within 3 feet of glass. This drastically cuts down on window collisions.

Dedtired - thanks for the kind words about my braids! I refer to it as my Rhoda Penmark "do" ... You remember her from The Bad Seed, right? ;-) DH and I also wondered how useful we would be on this medical mission, since neither of us has any training (beyond basic CPR). Our fears of inadequacy were quickly put to rest when we had to just jump in and start doing. DH was the muscles of the group, hefting heavy equipment that needed to be loaded and unloaded, and he also overcame his lack of Spanish-speaking ability when working with patients who needed reading glasses. We did have translators who were a huge help, but once they gave us some rudimentary phrases we were able to do a good deal without their help. I assisted him with the reading glasses, and one day we distributed shoes to the children, which required fitting little feet. Most of my time was spent as patient coordinator, acting as sort of a "gatekeeper" and ensuring that the flow went smoothly. My forte is administrative work, and I found my skills well put to use in the tasks I was assigned. There is so much work out there to be done, and there are so many roles that need to be filled. Think of it this way: The Air Force doesn't just need pilots. ;-)