nhbabs: Do you think the hawks are hunting something, like voles, near your house? Or maybe considering a nesting site close by? I saw the first Baltimore Orioles of the season today! and it's before the hummingbirds show up - usually the orioles come a little after the hummers. The grackles had gobbled up most of the suet outside and the orioles were picking at the scraps. I raced out and put new suet in all of the cages and added some apricot preserves in a dish. This one came back but didn't seem too impressed with the new suet. He did seem to be looking down at the preserves in the dish in the middle of the feeder. When they start showing interest in the fruit I'll phase out the suet in those cages to discourage the grackles. I have another suet feeder up in another area. Claire

Kittysmith's vocal discription sounds like a European Starling to me. Those of us familiar with the Common Grackle know it's song is little more than the sound of a rusty hinge. Being human, there are definitely things that I don't care to have on my property. Right now the Japanese beetles are terrible, I can't remember a July without them. If I never see rats again it will be fine with me. European starlings and house sparrows are little more than feathered vermin. We can either discourage these birds and have a greatly improved environment or live in a "Polyanna" world, its a choice each one of us has to make. Sam

Wow...thanks you guys. I'm going to go read that link now. I'm thrilled that it could be a rare bird. The pic in that link sure looks exactly like the one we saw. After seeing Alan's ideas, I looked up brown-headed cowbird (I've seen tons of those, they are very common around here) and it did look like it but there were "similar looking" birds on the Audubon site and I was almost convinced it was a Brewer's Blackbird. But the female didn't look nearly as much like this pic of mine as this Rusty does!! Thank you all so much! I can always count on the good people here for ID's. You guys really know your birds!!

The boat tail grackles began coming to this area a few years ago (& most of the starlings-thankfully- then began to leave!). I do think they are beautiful & laugh at their 'look at me!' demeaner & take over our 50 ft. red cedar tree for their noisey 'conferences!but I don't like their aggressive behavior towards other birds! The ones here have black beaks. Am told they rob other bird's nests, eat the eggs, kill & eat the baby birds so am wondering when I see them fly with a small object in their beaks if it is the mosquito eating minnows that we keep (they are live bearers) in the small fish pond. I see them stand on the edge of the pond on rocks to drink & bath so guess when they see one of the top swimming (not to 'bright!) minnows they could catch one? Now we are putting netting over the small inground pond to be safe! Guess we can hope for a new variety of bird to come in when (? if) the grackles move on to an other area of the U.S. Odd, how here we seem to have these migrations of different varieties of birds! Few years ago we had ONE pair of mourning doves in our area.... now they are all over! Then the starlings came & took over for awhile but are a lot fewer now since the grackles arrived. We had one pair of curved billed threshers (orange eyes) three years ago & now our yard has dozens & some build nests in our cactus & seem to be not afraid at all ... even chase the resident squirrel! Now the influx of so many toads to our yard & pond ... THAT is another mystery! They are not afraid & seldom move away & don't seem to be of interest to any of our dogs even when the dogs sniff them at the pond... do they have no aroma or maybe it is offensive to the dogs? Now the blue tail lizzards keep the dogs in a perpetual/fruitless chase!! What a blessing of on-going 'fun' in our small city lot in the high desert!