Rob Thorn mentioned the large number of blue jays. They have been coming to my feeders the past week, which is pretty unusual. There have been more in the neighborhood than I ever recall seeing. Several of my neighbors do have oak trees, but I see them in the white pines as well. One of my neighbors feed squirrels, and the blue jays steal the squirrel food - corn, large sunflower seeds, etc. (He puts out dried heads of the very large sunflowers. Both the jays and the squirrels love it.) The red-breasted nuthatches did not stay long. They were here maybe a week. I haven't seen or heard any since last weekend (Sept. 29-30). Yesterday I sat in my kitchen and graded compositions all day, and had a good view of my feeders. Besides the blue jays, I had a lot of house finches, but most of the goldfinches seem to have moved on. I haven't needed to fill the nyger feeder for four days, while just last week I was filling it every day. I did not see a single cardinal yesterday, which is also pretty unusual. Did the blue jays intimidate them? I'm getting a lot of Carolina chickadees, an occasional tufted titmouse, less frequently white-breasted nuthatch, downy woodpecker, and a very vocal northern flicker. I haven't seen my red-bellied woodpecker is quite a while, but then I assume he's finding food elsewhere. I hear the Carolina wrens, but they haven't felt the need to visit my feeders anytime I've been watching. A week ago, I shopped for my Saturday groceries around 6 am, and was awestruck by the emerging chimney swifts at the old North Elementary school on Deo Drive. They bubbled up out of the stack in noisy waves. There were hundreds of them. I don't know how long this had been going on before I came out of the Kroger store, but I was immediately aware of them by the sound. I watched for several minutes, until the emergence slowed to a trickle. I did not notice as many around when I walked this Saturday about 6:30, so perhaps they had moved on as well. I have had deer in my yard recently, and see them quite frequently now on my early morning (5 am) walks in the neighborhood. Considering that I live in a fairly high-density older residential neighborhood with small lots, this is somewhat unusual. I came home Wed. to find the glass in the door to my breezeway had been shattered. When I took it to be repaired, the glass man said it looked to him like a deer had tried to run through it. He says he has had many such cases recently. I only bring this up, because it suggests that a shortage of food in less populated areas is bringing the deer into town. If there isn't enough food for the deer, then likely the birds are facing similar shortages. This is shaping up to be an unusual feeder winter, I suspect. What will show up, and when? Margaret Bowman Licking Co., OH ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]