Hi Molie, ahh...more water envy. Great pictures of a great bird! My suggestions for bird guides: In paperback, I like 'The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America' which Claire recommended to me a few years ago. I like Sibley's very much because it shows drawings of birds with their changing plumage at various stages of development. That one feature of Sibley's Guide has helped me often. (but I still confuse little brown birds) When out in the field looking for eagles, ospreys and everything else the Connecticut River offers, I bring my iPod Touch because it fits in a shirt pocket and I loaded it with two apps from the iTunes Store - 'iBird North' and 'The Ultimate Audubon New England Field Guide'. If you wanted one app for your iPhone for the sake of portability, I suggest the Audubon NE Guide because it offers birds, mammals, fish, plants,butterflies, spiders & insects, wildflowers, trees, seashells, and the natural history of New England. Plus, it has multiple voices of most birds and animals,their ranges, etc. It is the most complete guide I've seen, and the pictures and sounds are crystal clear throughout each category. The iTunes App Store lists it as"Audubon Nature New England", if you're interested. "5 Top Bird Guides for iPhone" Jane

How nice this thread got bumped! I enjoyed re-reading it and thinking about how much the yard has changed in a year. My bird-friendly yard is evolving. Have made great progress removing invasives, particularly Bittersweet, Buckthorn, and Norway Maples (treework cost me $2000 last year and there's still one GINORMOUS Norway maple left). There was a lot of brush created by all this tree/shrub work. Some was burned this Spring, right smack in the middle of the Oriental bittersweet patch, but the rest is in piles. The brush piles attract a lot of birds, particularly Sparrows, Cardinals, Juncos, and Wrens. The birds also love the back half-acre, which is wild and full of Crabapples, Choke Cherries, White Pine, and still some invasives like Honeysuckle and Autumn olive. Also making great progress on growing bird-friendly natives. Purchased another 50 native tree/shrub seedlings from the NH Nursery. That makes 130 total between this year and last - all of which ultimately make berries/nuts for the birds and wildlife. Most of them are in holding beds and haven't flowered yet, too little, but I've given away some and started to plant out a few. I winter-sowed many native species of perennials, annuals, and vines. Exactly where all this stuff is going, is not completely clear at this point, but I'm creating lasagne beds like crazy! The birds are always flitting around the yard and it's only going to get more interesting and fruitful for them (hopefully). It's great!

Florantha, I am planning a bookcase almost exactly the same dimensions as yours (30" wide by 84-90" high depending on what looks eye sweet at the time.) I have built zillions of bookshelves in my day, and if you use full 1" or 1 1/8" dimensional lumber for shelves up to about 30", you can usually avoid having to have a vertical in the middle. Having the shelf without an extra vertical in the middle looks better, IMO, unless you are going to having a second unit next to it. (And anybody who already has that many cookbooks may need another case soon, what with the way books breed when you're not paying attention......) A couple of things to think about: do you want adjustable height shelves? These allow for later adjustment when your collection grows, but they are not as sturdy as shelves that are fixed from the start. It's possible to have some of each, too. I also advise having at least some different height shelves, in order to maximise the books you can store. A case in which all the shelves are the same height is boring to look at, IMO. In general cases look best with wider spacing on the bottom, gradually moving to shorter heights above. But you can have a couple of tallish shelves underneath a single shelf that's even taller at about waist or windowsill height, followed by the rest of the shelves being shorter. Sometimes it looks better (in case of taller shelves X2 or 3, below the tallest shelf) to have the bottom shelves a few inches deeper, then have the case step-back a couple of inches, sort of like hutch, at the level of the floor of the tallest shelf and from there in upwards. Be sure to have the bottom shelf several inches off the floor (I usually do about 6">; floors are not good places for books. It can also look good to have doors over the lower couple of shelves in a hutch-style step-back case. This is great storage and good for those messy-looking papers. If you paint the shelves, you'll need to let them cure for at least a couple of weeks, preferably a month, before loading the books. Book edges have a fatal affinity for un-cured paint (even after it seems dry, it is not cured). They may stick, tear, and discolor if stored on or even near, fresh paint. Even after a month, I always lay down a liner of that polypropylene stuff that they use to cover dust jackets on library books. (You can order it from library supply houses like DEMCO.) For strength I usually have a cleat nailed along the back of the case underneath the shelf. Along the sides, another cleat can be nailed, as long as it kind of fades away before reaching the front, sort of like a very narrow corbell. But your cabinet maker may have ideas, too. The key thing is to not skimp on the thickness of the shelf boards. Properly sized boards will stay true and level, no matter how many copies of Gourmet and Mark Bittman you plunk down on them. When you have a plan (shelf height and widths) get some large newsprint paper and draw it, full scale and stick it up and see how you like it. As for lighting, it's hard to tell what will work for you. I plan to have a reading chair by my shelves in a corner of my kitchen near a french window. I'll probably have a floor lamp, because my chair is meant for reading, not just decor. Keep in mind that sunlight is hard on books, as is the light from CFL bulbs. I don't know about LEDs, though. I plan to put UV resistent covers on my favorite cookbooks as they will get sun during the winter, alas. To my mind a reading nook by a window is a kitchen essential, (more essential to me than a window by the sink, for which I am getting prodded on my current layout critique thread). But then I think a reading nook is essential in every room. My dining room is a dining room by grace of a table in the middle of a library, with a sideboard thrown in for effect. I think if you're a book lover/fiend then rooms without books look nekkid, in ways that mystify non-book people. Face it, it's a disease, for which there is no easy cure. Oh, yeah: books and steam and grease are not happy companions so make sure your venting is good. There are also some books devoted to pictures of (whate else?) bookshelves, perhaps your library has some. I can hunt about and get some titles if that will help. Nancy

It doesnt sound like the Carolina Wren or the mockingbird unless its repeating a louder and more annoying call than the ones on the website lol. I would love it, if it was Screech Owls. I have seen them around but they sound different than what we are hearing. We also have a big nesting of Barred Owls in the woods behind us and they get in the trees by our bedroom window and put up a racket of monkey noises some nights. They are hysterical. I hear them some afternoons too in the little meadow area between us and a neighbor. It sounds closest to a cardinal mating call but it consistently has only two "notes"/syllables to the call with the second being a slightly higher pitch than the first. It waits a few seconds before repeating it. It Doesn't sound like a typical chirpy songbird or a crow or hawk etc. It does sound a little astroid or video gameish but it is loud! I guess I should get some binoculars so I can try and see it. Maybe some small ones w a camera in them so I can take a photo and then I can look it up. This has been going on for several years every spring so its probably a mating call of something lol. I will have to look at reviews on amazon lol.