Q: I've enjoyed my catbirds all summer long and am going to miss their gurgles and burbles when they're gone. Where do they spend the winter?

A: If you spend time in Florida in the winter, you'll likely spot a catbird in the same kind of tangled vegetation they enjoy in our area in the summer. Wintering catbirds are also found all along the Gulf Coast, in Central America, in Cuba and the Caribbean and up the Eastern seaboard. I agree with you, it's nice to have catbirds raising their family in the backyard.

Q: I know that cardinals nested in my or my neighbor's shrubs, but when I saw the cardinal later, he was feeding some chocolate brown birds. Did he get confused about which youngsters were his?

A. No, that cardinal knew exactly what he was doing — he was feeding one of his own fledglings. Young cardinals start out as dark brown birds and gradually attain their adult plumage later in the year.

Q: I have a big problem with raccoons drinking all the liquid in my hummingbird and oriole feeders. I sometimes forget to bring these indoors at night, and my husband suggested putting mouse poison in the feeders. Would that harm the birds?

A: It certainly would kill any birds that sipped the poisoned fluid, so please do not do this, never, ever! The mouse poisons I'm familiar with work as blood thinners, and whatever would kill a mouse will kill a bird. Please remember to bring those feeders in at night and never, ever put poison in them.

Q: I have a hummingbird mystery: I keep four feeders for hummingbirds and had six or more of them visiting the feeders. But then we had a big rainstorm one night in the summer and the hummingbirds disappeared. Do you have any idea why?

A: I'm so envious of the number of hummingbirds your feeders attract, and I don't think the rain had anything to do with their departure. Instead, it had to do with the calendar: Earlier in the season multiple hummingbirds are more tolerant of other hummingbirds, while they fatten up after migration and decide on territories. As nesting season approaches, they became more territorial and a dominant bird drives off most of the others, while females became busy with nest building and egg brooding just at the time of that rainstorm. They'll likely appear again as their return migration date approaches.

Q: A wren was building a nest this summer in our new birdhouse in the backyard. I saw the wren attacking a squirrel and a chipmunk one day. I read that wrens can be aggressive toward other birds, but squirrels?

A: You seem to have a particularly feisty house wren in your backyard. It sounds like a pair of wrens was raising its second brood of the season and were very intolerant of any other creatures using their space. They'd regard the squirrel and chipmunk as predators, and truth to tell, those two rodent species are very fond of bird eggs.

Q: I saw an odd thing in early July: Spiders have built webs in the corners (outside) of my home's window screens. A goldfinch landed on the sill and was messing around with a web, although I couldn't tell if it was looking for trapped insects or what.

A. That must have been a sight to see. I'm thinking that the female goldfinch was harvesting spider webbing to use to line her nest. Many birds add spider webbing to their nests because they know how it stretches to accommodate their ever-growing broods.

Q: The only birds that I've ever seen in our birdbath are robins and catbirds. Why don't I see smaller birds bathing? They perch on the rim to drink but they don't hop in and I'm wondering if they could be afraid of drowning?

A: All birds bathe in one way or another, even ducks and geese who spend most of their lives on the water. I see small birds like chickadees, goldfinches and even tiny chipping sparrows taking baths in my birdbath in the summertime. You may have hit on the answer when you mentioned birds' fear of drowning. Many birdbaths simply are too deep for small birds, or the sides are glazed and slippery, so they avoid bathing in them. A quick fix for such deep basins is to place a brick or stone in the center for smaller birds to stand on.

Q: How can I stop bees from overtaking my hummingbird feeders? The bees attack the hummingbirds when they come in to feed.

A: There are a couple of things you can do to keep bees and wasps away from your feeders. One is to offer the insects their own feeding site: Make a sugar/water mixture that's a bit sweeter than the one you use for birds, such as 1 part sugar to 3 parts water, then pour some into a dish or pie plate. Set this on the ground or on the deck in the vicinity of the feeders, but about 10 to 15 feet away, and it should draw off the flying insects. If your nectar feeders have those yellow plastic flower-like feeding ports, I'd pull these off. Yellow is a color easily seen by insects and ends up attracting them to a feeder.

St. Paul resident Val Cunningham, who volunteers with the St. Paul Audubon Society and writes about nature for local, regional and national newspapers and magazines, can be reached at valwrites@comcast.net.