My backyard birds are all common species, but they give me great pleasure nonetheless, especially as it's easy to observe the behaviors in a specific population over time. This spring, I've been particularly interested in watching how behaviors changed as the breeding season got underway. One of the behaviors I've most enjoyed is watching pairs feed each other; most often, I've seen cardinals and bluejays doing this. Today for the first time, I watched a pair of Carolina wrens as one fed bits of suet to the other. Lots of singing from the male this morning, too. Very pretty birds. The blue jays are endlessly fascinating to me: smart, bold, attractive birds. It's tempting to anthropomorphize: aggressive, ruthless, etc. - but I see them as successful and interesting. What a range of behavior. Last spring I watched a blue jay raid a mourning dove nest, spilling all the ready-to-fledge nestlings to the ground and devouring at least one of them. Today I watched a pair of jays feeding each other - dare I say tenderly? Well, gently and carefully, anyway. I like the squirrels, too; they don't cause problems as we have a squirrel-proof feeder, and generally everyone feeds peacefully. Up till now, we've had just 2-4 gray squirrels, but a pair of red squirrels has recently arrived. These two are more assertive about keeping the grays away, and will regularly chase the grays up and down the nearby elm. The other day a gray was busily feeding under the feeder, with his back unwisely turned to the red, who was watching from under a bench. The red twitched and wiggled and seemed grow incresingly agitated about the gray eating HIS food - couldn't contain himself - and finally shot out from under the bench, and racing at top speed, butted the gray squarely on the rump. The surprised (!) gray shot straight up into the air about 1.5 feet, did a flip, and hit the ground running. Didn't see him at the feeder for a few hours. Sarah Johnston Farmington