[401k In The Black!]

What did the trick for you Menzies?

Stellar trading results, the mild recovery of the stock market as a whole or do you have someone managing your portfolio? Inquiring minds (and people with not such good luck) want to know.

[Any Bird Watchers Out There?]

At this moment I am watching a male rose breasted Grosbeak, about 8-9 Goldfinches, a couple purple finches and a white crowned sparrow, plus the ubiquitous grey squirrel on the feeder(s) outside my living room window. All I use is the small black oil sunflower seed. Did the fancy premade cake stuff, the niger thistle seed, the mixture stuff with millet and small grains and they ate it but the sunflower seed is what they all like. Even the chickadee's will grab a seed and bash it open (fun to watch)

I also have a couple long screws sticking up through the main beam that I impale ears of corn on and the blue jays will annihilate those in short order. My brother runs the meat department at the family grocery store so I always have some suet hanging off one of the posts. All the birds except mourning doves, cardinals and grosbeak types seem to bang away at that. If it EVER gets summer here I will put out the hummingbird and oriole feeders.

My son in law puts out feed for the bald eagles during winter and they are really fun to watch. He discovered feeding large birds of prey when he threw the carcass from his deer onto the stone pile in the fencerow behind his house. It's about 150 yds behind his house and his original thought was to get a shot at the numerous coyotes and fox that inhabit the area. A couple days later, there were two bald eagles feeding on the frozen remains. Pretty awesome. He did a little experimenting and came up with a stand about 4 feet tall with a platform on top large enough to hold a deer carcass. The eagles love it. When they burn through the all the family's deer kill from the fall season he get's meat scraps from the slaughter house, freezes them up and put's them out on the platform. Once winter breaks the eagles quit coming and the leftover bones go in the wood boiler. He has the thing set up about 60-70 yards behind his house.

I have a Rastus that keeps the barn cats away from the yard in a very efficient manner (he kills them) so they are no problem. Now the darn Coopers hawk.......he's a different story.

[Wiley, This Is Hilarious!]

I noticed that too while prowling at the HT. It's what brought me over here. Looks like a nice place and I see Menzies hasn't been banned here............yet So I think I'll set down and look around a spell.