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Hello, and welcome to our little corner of the World Wide Web! We're Walt and June. Walt worked 34 years at the paper mill in town, and June was a school librarian for 27 years. Now that we're both retired, we spend a good part of every day looking out the kitchen window with a pair of binoculars and a cup of coffee.

We live on a wooded lot outside Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with oaks and maples, a stand of white pines, and a lot of brush along the back fence line that the birds just love. We started keeping a list of every bird that visits the yard on the day Walt retired, and this spring June decided it was time to put it on the Internet so the family could see it. (She learned HTML from a book she checked out of the library. Once a librarian, always a librarian!)

We hope you enjoy your visit. Please write to us and tell us what's coming to your feeders!

We were the GeoCities.us Homepage of the Month for August 1999! We still can't quite believe it. Thank you to everyone who has written to us since. We've heard from bird watchers in 22 states and three Canadian provinces.

We have a tube feeder and a platform feeder off the back deck, a thistle feeder by the kitchen window, suet cages in the winter, and a heated birdbath when it freezes (birds need water in the winter too). Here's what we put out:

Keeping Squirrels Out (Walt's department)
Walt has been at war with the squirrels since 1996. The squirrels are winning. :-) Here's what finally helped:

• Put your feeders on a smooth metal pole at least 10 feet away from any tree, fence, deck railing or roof. Squirrels can jump a lot farther than you'd think!
• Put a baffle on the pole (a metal cone, or a "stovepipe" tube) about 4 to 5 feet off the ground so they can't climb past it.
• Rake up the spilled seed under the feeders.
• Try safflower seed. The cardinals love it, and the squirrels usually don't care for it.
• Our secret weapon: we put out ear corn for the squirrels way out by the woodpile. A squirrel with its own corn is (mostly) a squirrel that leaves the feeders alone. Walt calls it the Peace Treaty of 1998.

Our hummers usually arrive around the first or second week of May and leave by the middle of September. Leaving your feeder up in the fall will not keep them from migrating, so leave it up a week or two after you see the last one, for any stragglers passing through from up north.

Here is every bird that has come to our yard and feeders, in the order we first saw them, starting with the morning of April 1, 1996, Walt's first day of retirement (no fooling!). 30 species so far. We only add a bird when we're both sure of it.

Bird	First Seen	Notes
1. Black-capped Chickadee	Apr. 1996	The very first bird on our list. Now they'll eat sunflower seeds right out of Walt's hand.
2. Blue Jay	Apr. 1996	Loud and bossy, but so handsome.
3. White-breasted Nuthatch	Apr. 1996	Walks down the tree trunk headfirst.
4. Downy Woodpecker	Apr. 1996	Our smallest woodpecker.
5. Hairy Woodpecker	Apr. 1996	Looks just like the Downy, only bigger, with a much longer bill.
6. Northern Cardinal	Apr. 1996	June's favorite. A pair has nested in the lilacs three summers running.
7. American Robin	Apr. 1996	Our state bird. The first robin of spring gets marked on the calendar every year.
8. Mourning Dove	Apr. 1996	Walks around under the feeders cleaning up after everybody.
9. American Goldfinch	Apr. 1996	Here all year. Loves the thistle feeder.
10. Chipping Sparrow	May 1996	A neat little sparrow with a rusty cap.
11. Rose-breasted Grosbeak	May 1996	The males have a rose-red triangle on the chest. Crazy about sunflower seed.
12. Baltimore Oriole	May 1996	Orange halves and grape jelly! Some bird books call it the Northern Oriole.
13. Ruby-throated Hummingbird	May 1996	The only hummingbird that nests in Wisconsin.
14. House Wren	May 1996	Nests in the wren house by the garden every year and sings from dawn to dusk.
15. Northern Flicker	May 1996	A woodpecker that eats ants on the lawn!
16. Indigo Bunting	June 1996	Looks almost black until the sun hits it just right. Then, oh my!
17. Cedar Waxwing	Aug. 1996	A flock of about twenty cleaned out our chokecherries in one afternoon.
18. Red-breasted Nuthatch	Oct. 1996	Smaller than the White-breasted, with a black stripe through the eye. Some winters we have them, some we don't.
19. Dark-eyed Junco	Oct. 1996	Our "snowbirds." Here from October to April.
20. American Tree Sparrow	Nov. 1996	A winter visitor with a rusty cap and one dark spot in the middle of its chest.
21. Pileated Woodpecker	Jan. 1997	Nearly as big as a crow! Came to the suet just once. We hear it back in the woods.
22. Purple Finch	Mar. 1997	The male looks like a sparrow that was dipped in raspberry juice.
23. Eastern Bluebird	Apr. 1997	Came the first spring after Walt put up three bluebird houses along the field. Two pairs nested this year!
24. Tree Swallow	May 1997	Took over one of the bluebird houses, so Walt put up another box right next to it. Now everybody's happy.
25. White-throated Sparrow	May 1997	Probably here before, but we didn't notice it until we heard it sing "Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody."
26. Wild Turkey	Nov. 1997	Fourteen of them strolled right across the backyard the week before Thanksgiving. Walt said they had some nerve.
27. Cooper's Hawk	Feb. 1998	Caught a Mourning Dove by the platform feeder while June was doing the dishes. Nature isn't always pretty.
28. Barred Owl	Mar. 1998	Heard, not seen (yet!): "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?"
29. Red-bellied Woodpecker	Dec. 1998	The red is on its head, not its belly! Seems like we see more of them up here every year.
30. Scarlet Tanager	May 1999	Bright red with black wings, way up in the oaks. Walt nearly fell off the deck.

We don't count the House Sparrows and starlings, even though they certainly count themselves. And the fall warblers will get their own list someday, when we're better at telling them apart!

Wednesday, Sept. 22
Chilly this morning, and the maples are starting to turn. The White-throated Sparrows are back, scratching around under the lilacs. The Blue Jays are busy carrying acorns off to bury them. The ones they forget about turn into oak trees!

Sunday, Sept. 19
Warblers! A mixed flock came through the oaks along with the chickadees this morning. Walt counted at least four kinds: Yellow-rumped, Nashville, Black-throated Green, and one little greenish-yellow fellow we're still arguing about. Our field guide has a whole page called "Confusing Fall Warblers," and they aren't kidding! A tip: in the fall, look wherever the chickadees are. The warblers like to travel along with them.

Thursday, Sept. 16
Our last hummingbird of the year, a female or a youngster (no red throat), at the feeder at 7:10 this morning. We'll leave the feeder up until the end of the month for stragglers. See you in May, little ones!

Wednesday, Sept. 15
Walt saw a "kettle" of hawks over the field this afternoon, dozens of them circling up high and then gliding off to the south. Most likely Broad-winged Hawks, which migrate in big groups in the middle of September.

Sunday, Sept. 12
Haven't seen a Rose-breasted Grosbeak in over a week, and the orioles left the last week of August. It's getting quieter out there.

Saturday, Sept. 4
Hummingbirds chasing each other around the feeder all day long. They're fattening up for the long trip south. They nearly double their weight before they go!

Still waiting on: the juncos. They usually get back here the first or second week of October. June says when the juncos come back, it's time to find the snow shovel.

We love cats! Our old gray tom, Smokey, lived to be 17, and he was an indoor cat his whole life, perfectly happy on the windowsill watching "his" birds. But cats that roam outside catch a great many songbirds, even when they're well fed, because hunting is just their nature. So if you have a kitty, please think about keeping it indoors. It's safer for the cat, too, with cars and dogs and all. Cat lovers, do stop by Mr. Whiskers' Cat Emporium over in Petsburgh for lots of fun cat talk.

Coming soon! We have lots of pictures, but no way to get them onto the computer yet. June's nephew Gary has a scanner, and he's promised to bring it along when he comes for Thanksgiving. Walt also has two rolls of film at the drugstore right now with (we hope!) a good shot of the Scarlet Tanager. Check back after the holidays.

• Mr. Delgado's 7th Grade Science – a science teacher who wrote to tell us his students looked at our checklist when they were learning about observation. We were tickled!
• The Henderson Family Home Page – nice folks from Iowa who run our WebRing.
• The RainForest neighborhood – more pages about nature and the outdoors.