Storm passed us completely by, though there were some beautiful thunderheads to the east. Not even a drop. Yay! I'm on the other side of the same coin, NJ. I can't conceive of it *not* raining in the summer. I frequently read in gardening books and even on GW here about not getting the leaves of certain plants wet. I've scratched my head for years. Doesn't rain get them wet all the time? We just got back from a road trip to Victoria, BC a few days ago. It doesn't really rain in the summer there either. It was extremely strange to see brown grass (where it wasn't irrigated) and occasional falling leaves and I was told this was normal in the summer. That just doesn't happen here except in drought years. We saw farms all over BC baling beautiful hay. They could cut and bale at the optimum nutrition level because they totally controlled the irrigation. Time to cut? Just stop watering. Take as much time as necessary to dry in the swath; heck, take a couple extra days to flip the swath and dry it through. It's amazing. We just can't do that here most years. Usually, when it looks like there's going to be a rash of a few days with no rain, farmers are dropping everything - even 9 to 5 jobs in town - to 'make hay while the sun shines'. Even then, it's unusual to get hay off with no rain at all on it. Most of the prairies here support "dry-land" farms with no irrigation setup at all. In an average year here, I only usually need to water the garden at the beginning, when seeds are close to the surface and yet to germinate. After they've established, I rarely need to pull out the sprinkler. There's at least an inch of rain per week or so and when there's not, the roots dig deep enough that they're good for a few more days until it rains again. This is only my second year doing dry bush beans, but I'm finding it difficult to mature them on the plant because of the short season and because the rain still comes in the fall, though less. Same for the pole beans, though, they're up in the air and do dry off a little faster. No rain in the winter - just snow, cold and more cold. We can go into the -30s Celcius for a couple of weeks at a time and -40 and below is not unheard of. I don't get to do cover crops. Typically, last frost is within the first week of June (or late May in a good year) and first frost is usually early to mid September (but can come as early as August in a bad year). We can extend harvest into early October by covering on nights where there's frost forecast. Crops mature, but don't really grow much by then. I've tried mulches a few times, but have discarded the idea. I know it's a great thing for many gardeners, but I find it cools the soil too much and there's not really a need to conserve moisture. Should we go back to drought years, I'd see about trying it again. Right now, though, I need heat heat heat to reach my soil. :)

So far I've only seen cowbird babies here with Red-winged Blackbirds and Baltimore Orioles. The size is similar and there seem to be mixed families so the cowbirds don't appear to have displaced the original babies. The red-wings and cowbirds feed together amicably and the orioles brought both cowbird and oriole fledglings to the jam feeders (although the cowbirds didn't eat the jam). None of the cardinals, blue jays, or grackles have cowbirds associated with them, so they probably rejected them. No crows either, although they're fledging now and the adult cowbirds are probably long gone. I can't imagine a crow putting up with a cowbird chick, anyway. I wonder if the cowbird fledglings identify with the birds that raised them, so that a cowbird female raised by a red-wing would be more likely to lay an egg in a red-wing nest. That should give a higher rate of success and maybe skew the egg-laying process toward species like red-wings and orioles. Claire

Yes, guides with arrows pointing to field marks aren't the ultimate in identification. Guides with notes about other birds with similar characteristics and then explanations about what to look for the tell the two apart are helpful. I have found that in most cases where IDs are difficult it's really beneficial to research more than one resource. We really have some tools now that weren't commonly available even fifteen years ago and that's access to the internet and cheaper digital cameras. I keep a digital right by the regular birding window. I take rapid frames of the birds in question from as many angles as I can. Sometimes you don't have time to focus and be fussy. Getting a less than perfect picture is not always a failure. If it helps you to catch the target sitting next to a known bird, immediately you have a handle on size. I also prefer real photographs I find on this forum, because painted representations just leave too much to artistic license. LOL. I sometimes wonder how many really cool sparrows I missed by logging them as something common? So many folks just causally dismiss them because they look similar. This is where you sometimes find your lifers! Keep a notepad handy to your observation station to mark down anything you notice on field marks. I have a good memory but the image in the brain can play tricks on you quickly. Draw a pic if you must, and try to catch some photos. Document, document and document.

To follow up on the sequence of events since my original post . . . Costco agreed to replace the second NXR range (including the cost of the switch out). Even though this saga does not end well, Costco has a customer for life because they went out of their way to make things right with a range that was nothing but wrong. The third range arrived last week. The delivery guy was in the process of packing up the range with the chipped enamel as my contractor installed the new range. I am so glad he was able to be here at that exact time, because once it was all hooked up, all 4 ignitors would not stop clicking, even when the knobs were in the OFF position. We turned it on and off several times, unhooked and hooked back up the gas, did what the troubleshooting manual suggested, and tried calling DURO but could not get them on the phone bc of the time difference. After exhausting all of our ideas on how to remedy the ignitor situation, I threw up my hands and refused the range. The second range did not not present with this issue, and my contractor had not ever dealt with this issue on any installs before, so I did not feel confident in keeping the range. Luckily, the delivery guy was still here, so he packed up the third NXR and took it off with the second one. I came to the conclusion that even though we wanted the NXR to work out so badly, it was not meant to be for us. 0 for 3 is a strike out. Costco offerred to ship and install a fourth NXR, and we are grateful for their generosity, but refused and got a refund. We promptly purchased a GE Cafe gas range. It arrived quickly, installed easily, and is working perfectly so far. Athough it was 1K more and is not nearly as sharp looking as the NXR, in the end, I think it worth our peace of mind to go with something more ubiquitous. To all those NXR owners out there who have nothing but praise to heap on your range, I am envious. I really wish I could have been among your ranks.