Two to three mornings a week since mid-December I have spent 15-20 minutes out in front of my townhouse before driving my daughter to school. On most mornings there is a large flight of blackbirds that pass over, moving roughly southeast to northwest. They come from a roost on Aberdeen Proving Ground. The number varies, depending on the flight line, from about 10,000 to over 200,000. This morning an adult male Yellow-headed Blackbird was part of the group. The vast majority of the birds are Common Grackles. The earliest part of the flight is often Red-winged Blackbirds, however. There are small numbers of Brown-readed Cowbirds and European Starlings mixed in. Rick "Everywhere I go I'm asked if the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." Flannery O'Connor Rick Blom rblom@blazie.com Bel Air, Maryland