Leslie, To get full enjoyment of the cedar waxwings, you need to watch them after they've eaten fruit that has fermented over the winter. Let's just say they get tipsy and have trouble walking, much less flying. It is pretty entertaining. Most of the birds we have that I cherish most only really started coming in large numbers in drought years. Once they figured out we were a reliable food and water source, they began visiting regularly. The worst the drought (or the colder the winter weather), the more birds we have. My favorite bird sightings since moving here include the two golden eagles I watched for weeks in the spring and summer of 2004---they finally flew right over our house together one day while our friend, Ken, was here working on the roof of the barn so he got to see them too. I had mostly seen them when I walked the dogs on a road that runs between us and the river, so having them fly right over our place was real convenient. Other favorites are the Chuckwalla's Widow, which you hear more than you see, and the Whip Poor Will---common in our childhood but rare now. The bird we see least on our property but all over the neighborhood, running the roads naturally, is the roadrunner. They can forage for all kinds of food so rarely come here to eat or drink. That means that on the rare occasion a roadrunner is here in the yard eating or drinking, you know that the drought is just about as bad as it possibly can get. We have a lot of wooded acreage and it is full of birds. We get woodpeckers, flickers, nuthatches, brown creepers, phoebes, bluebirds....just all sorts of interesting birds. I've had my fill of snakes for the year already, in or out of trees. Last week I had a close encounter with 3 different snakes, and one of our cats is acting sick and listless as if he was bitten by a venomous snake. For a few days I wasn't sure he was going to make it, but he seemed to show improvement today. The snakes seem terribly prolific this year and I'm not happy about that. Dawn

Hi calliope! Ours here do the SAME thing. I have been seeing groups of 6-8 Blue Jays flying together across the yard, all of them yelling loudly the whole way. I don't think that the behavior is connected to a hawk here. I noticed it last year when the parents fledged their young. They stayed in and around the yard for a long time, and they would engage in this same screaming Blue Jay posse behavior. I'm not sure why they do it though.

Stayed home all day today. Only accomplishment was to bathe Georgyâ¦..she got hold of a frozen dead fish from a nearby pond while DH was walking her. He thought it was a stick. Needless to say, she smelled pretty bad. We're going out to dinner shortly and then I have to play bridge. We're suppose to get 3 -4 inches of snow tonight so driving home should be fun. I do have 4-wheel and as long as it isn't icy, I'll be okay.

best story? parents lived in Hollywood apt with a small balcony...neighbors around the other side of the apt building put out whole peanuts.(in shell) the enterprising jay would fly around to my parents and bury the nuts in a planter they had...my father loved to leave the slider open as well as the screen...3 stories up you don't worry...well that was the day the jay started to check out the apt and scared my mom who had just gotten out of the shower and only in a towel when they met!! don't know who was more scared! needless to say that was the last time the screen was left open... bet our late staying jays and robins are gone today, lol...had a dusting of snow in metro Detroit earlier...