I think their broader use is somewhat dictated by location. Left coast landscape designers often use OG's extensively and IME with sales at my nursery, shoppers are asking for a wide variety of different grasses, with Miscanthus cultivars only comprising a rather small percentage of these. Here, evergreen grasses outsell deciduous forms by about 2 to 1 and the emphasis is on those that are adaptable to shady conditions or xeric conditions. Seemingly contradictory, but the PNW has a lot of native conifers so that shade in at least a portion of the garden is nearly omnipresent, as well as very dry summers prompting more drought tolerant plantings. Their incorporation in landscape designs here is similar to that of perennials - only in larger gardens does one encounter large sweeps ala Oheme and Van Sweden. Nearly all professionally designed landscapes in my area include OG's to some extent, but they tend to intermixed with other perennial type plantings and small woody material. Bolder statements tend to be some privacy screening with larger growing specimens (pampas is used frequently as well as miscanthus) or with the very colorful grass-like phormiums. At my nursery, I sell more Anamenthele than any other OG, followed by the wood sedges (Carex morrowii cvts.), bronze or leatherleaf sedges and blue fescues. And black mondo grass, although not a true OG and expensive as all get out, outsells them all. I bring in huge quantities each season from Iseli Nursery and always sell out.

I raise all the babies together. I also have a hen and now a tom that live and range with the chickens. Have never had blackhead on anyone. Mine do not have an insulated anything. The barn is 24'x30' (the peak is approx 16") and everybody has a pen inside. The chickens, banties, Palms and Reds as well as the rabbit cages all heat it up pretty good. I think there were only one or two times that I could see my breath in there all winter. I do keep a 50 gal tank in the barn that I have a heater in so I don't have to drag water back and forth. The old pig pen on the other hand, I keep two heat lamps in there which was fine until one of the turkeys tried to perch on the cord. Then another scorched his feathers on the lamp, hogging all the heat, I suppose. We are working on building our pens and flocks right now, but I an sure as the season progresses I will wind up with extras. Right now I have Turk, the old man who went to fair. We have not had any luck breeding him and his 4 replacements, who are not as correct as Turk is. I am using the next best to try to get some poults out of the Reds still and then he will go to fair and compete against Turk. The birds that I have out are pretty well sure that nothing is going to bother them here. The black hen will wander all over the front yard with the chickens. She actually sticks pretty close to them. The toms tend to stay pretty close together and don't forage a whole lot. They are busy flexing their muscles and just the typical male showing off thing. I have to make sure that I have feed in pens for them otherwise I am not sure they (the toms) would eat. The hens are busy ignoring the toms and do pretty well for themselves. Thing to remember, is when you have several toms, they will compete with eachother and fight over any hen they can get near. That is why Turk is currently living with the chickens and the backups are with the ducks, no fighting. I will see if I can find some pics, but I will have to send them to your e-mail cuz I am still pic illerate and just don't have the time to figure it out yet. Maybe over the winter? Yeah, right. But maybe they will teach me how to in that computer class I have to take... I am glad that you have an interest in the Bourbon Reds. Try to pick the best, truest males you can for breeding though, if you can. I will try to borrow a "Standard of Perfection" and send you a copy of the Bourbon page. It will show you what to look for in the breed. It is one that is a very old line that has lost alot of stock in the last 50 or so years, but is coming back. Such pretty and smart birds. They really are. Another essay by: Billie

In my many many years of bird feeding, it's the 'unnamed small round seeds" that get kicked out. I used to put a row of feeders, tube platform and lantern at the edge of a garden that got lettuce and tomatoes in the summer. Every spring I would shovel out easily an inch of wet moldy icky seeds that had been kicked out while they were digging for the seeds they like. so now I only feed black oil sunflower, niger and suet cakes....with a handful of cracked corn tossed out now and then if the going gets hard....deep snow, long snow cover. Sparrows have a purpose, if only as Cooper's hawk food to keep them from murdering the cardinals. It is also my experience that most "new to feeding" bird feeding people mistake everything that isn't a cardinal, blue jay, chickadee or woodpecker as a "sparrow". Gold finches in winter garb are often called sparrows. Pine siskins are often called sparrows, rosy finches are often called sparrows....as are all the native sparrows which are labeled as nuisances. Rochesterroseman, it's pretty cruel to put out feeders and then when birds become dependent on them, take them in. If you have no feeders out, you will have no birds. Either you feed birds, sparrows, starlings and all or you don't. Not feeding because you have sparrows tells me that you have nothing that is favorable for birds other than sparrows, no open water, no fruit bearing trees or shrubs, no dense stands of shrubbery, no evergreens to shelter birds during the winter. and you are feeding seed that doesn't attract the birds you want to see. get some place for the birds to hide, feed a variety of foods....and wait. You can't expect to put out some suet and sunflower seed and a week later see cardinals and woodpeckers. It takes weeks and in some cases months for the birds to find the food source. Feeding the birds is fun....keep trying! They will bring a lot of joy to your winter days....and if you feed in the summer too, your winter population will be larger.

Love the peliated Nicholsworth! Are they really as big as they seem in the pictures? We had a shot of snow last week as well, but since then it's been bluebird skies so not a whole lot of action at our feeders. However, the beautiful days this weekend made it fun to get out and enjoy the outdoors, and had a chance to see a ton of raptors out at Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR. I also drove down to Santa Fe, and was hoping to check out the Randall Davey Audubon Center while I was there, unfortunately they are closed until February. Anyways, I switched out the peanut butter on my little aspen log feeder with some stuff called "bark butter." Advertised to be loved by over 125 different species of birds. Seems mine prefer just regular old Kroger brand crunchy peanut butter that is 1/3 the price... Also, I have started to notice that all the birds at my feeders significantly prefer safflower to BOSS. They wont hardly touch the sunflower seed feeders, but I have to refill the safflower ones pretty frequently. Perhaps we have just habituated them to safflower over the years. The millet experiment is also going well. The song sparrow shows up more often and the juncos absolutely love it. Even the white breasted nuthatch was trolling the ground with them. So far I have still only seen the single house sparrow, so that's good.