What do you mean when you say ‘blackbirds’? Redwing blackbirds? Grackles? Something else? We’ve had problems with grackles here (they love corn, and anything that has corn in it - including many of the cheaper suet blocks - will bring them out in droves) so besides changing up your feeders, looking at the content of what you are feeding can make a big difference depending on what type of bird you want deter.
Grackles. Tons of them. I don’t care if they eat the stuff on the ground, wild bird food & black oil sun seeds, but they flock to my Kaytee Peanut suet. At a buck per block, I really don’t want to put a new one out eight times a day. The bastards even lop off a bunch of my annual flowers, especially marigolds.
Yeah, grackles suck. I’ve reduced their numbers a lot by using that suet feeder (it’s really hard for them to cling to and get their beaks in the small holes) and feeding stuff they don’t like that the other birds do - suet blocks with little or no corn, mealworms in the regular feeder (which has counterweights that close the ports when they try to land on the perches), and thistle seed. If they show up at all, they’re relegated to picking around on the ground.
Grackles - we call them the gangster birds!
Interesting bird sighting yesterday in Dawson, PA at my BIL’s home. We were all sitting outside (Seven vaccinated adults). One woman was someone who dislikes me (imagine that) because she asked me out of the blue what my religion was and I told her. Ever since that interaction a few years back, she has hated me openly.
Anyway, we all saw a yellow bird. She immediately said it was an oriole. I disagreed, explaining that orioles are a bird I know, and it was definitely not a female Baltimore, nor Orchard, oriole. She disagreed.
I explained why it wasn’t an oriole, then went down the list of other yellow birds and why it wasn’t them. Not a warbler, etc. The only bird left after eliminating the rest was…a scarlet tanager (which I’d never seen in the wild).
The woman laughed and said I obviously didn’t know my colors. I explained that the bird (which was still sitting right in front of us) was a female, or none-breeding male, then BOOM it’s mate landed right next to her!!!
Scarlet tanager.. Boy, was her face red!
Lucky! We have had a female summer tanager come to our mealworm feeder, but I’ve never seen a male. I don’t think the scarlet tanagers hang out here at all.
Yeah, those birds seem so exotic to me.
Makes me laugh because in the midst of the all anti-grackle talk I have to admit I find them slightly exotic. They’re no longer considered rare around here, but they are still somewhat uncommon, locally restricted and really only established any kind of a solid foothold in my area in the last decade+. They’re one of those stunningly successful colonists, right up there with another recent arrival in my parts, the Eurasian Collared Dove ( like the GTG reached my area in the last decade+). I first saw a mated pair of Great-tailed Grackles in the Mojave Desert in the early 1990’s and was entranced by them. Giant, loud-ass Brewer’s Blackbirds with enormous tails! I still find them neat - haven’t yet gotten to the ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ stage 
. Locally they definitely aren’t seen much at backyard feeders yet, but I’m sure it is just a matter of time.
This weekend, I was up in Brainerd, MN and I saw a bunch of small brown-headed cowbirds busily poking through the grass in the median looking for food. I didn’t know they came in different sizes. These were about the size of a cardinal. The ones by my previous home, south of St. Paul, were huge by comparison, almost as big as the crows. I never knew there could be such size difference.
I stood 5 feet away and happily watched a cactus wren pecking around in a saguaro flower, then flying to a different saguaro cactus and sticking its pollen covered face into another flower.
It was super cool!
Several fawns being left in people’s yards around here. With one exception, the moms all came back to get them. The exception died.
You may rue that day! The ones on this side of the country are the Common Grackles. I’ve seen them descend like locusts on fields. The farmers hate them.
From Common Grackle Overview, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology:
Those raggedy figures out in cornfields may be called scare- crows , but grackles are the #1 threat to corn. They eat ripening corn as well as corn sprouts, and their habit of foraging in big flocks means they have a multimillion dollar impact. Some people have tried to reduce their effects by spraying a foul-tasting chemical on corn sprouts or by culling grackles at their roosts.
The rest of the intro isn’t much better.
I think Grackles are entertaining, but I don’t live with them. They are soundly hated in Phoenix.
We have little, tiny silver blue butterflies here. I think they are some sort of Azure, but they don’t hold still long enough for me to be able to figure out which ones they are. Anyhow, they are easily attracted by the simple action of turning on a hose, they like to soak up water from the ground.
I’ve learned that if I spray water in a circle around me, I can stand in the center of a butterfly ballet. Wanna talk about a mood lifter?!?
Hurricane Irma destroyed St Martin’s Butterfly Farm, and they haven’t rebuilt. We used to spend an afternoon there every year. Thousands of butterflies 
flying around, it was a magic experience.
The Finch Family has a new brood that have finally fledged. They’re at the feeder now. For the first time in a couple of broods, they’re all feeding themselves. There always seemed to be one that refused, much to his poor mother’s consternation. His brothers and sisters would be happily using the feeder, and the spoiled one would be hopping around on the deck, crying until his mother would bring him some food.
Babies everywhere! My gf went a little overboard protecting the rabbits nests from our dogs. She also began providing extra food to the breeding bunnies. When we go outside the two moms leave their hiding spots in the Solomon’s Seal and come right up to us demanding to be fed!
Awww!
Have the babies started playing, yet? They’re adorable when they chase each other around in the twilight.
Today, I saw … a groundhog (woodchuck) scrabbling his way back down a tree, not fifteen feet away from me.
I’ve seen him once before - I think there’s a mulberry fruiting back there - but it was closer to sunset at the time & I didn’t have any idea woodchucks could climb, so I figured it must’ve been the biggest, fattest squirrel on the planet.
But it’s not quite noon, sunny, and I was much closer today. I know what I saw!! Some googling indicates that groundhogs occasionally climb.
Yep, they take short trips out of the nest at first, then dart back if startled by a chipmunk. I told my gf rabbits were crepuscular and she thought I was making up words. (crepuscular is active at twilight)
We have a bunch of baby buns in our backyard too. They are the cutest things but I don’t like watching them. My husband is always calling me to look at the bunnies. I told him - Nope, I don’t want to get too invested in them. I’ll feel horrible when they’ve become owl, hawk, fox, etc. food. And yes I know they all have to eat and feed their babies too. But I don’t want to know about it.