April 3 is the end (of counting, anyway - the feeders stay up for me). sooey: I always have low numbers of chickadees and titmice; It's rare for me to see three at a time. They're in the woods here, so I don't know if I have 50 birds coming single-file or whether most of them don't bother with the feeders. They almost always swoop in to grab a bite and then eat it in a nearby tree. Sometimes I can tell if there's two by the direction they come in (one from the left, one from the right, one from the left, one from the right....) It's interesting also that all three of us have roughly equal numbers of Pine Siskins and American Goldfinches. During the big siskin invasion the goldfinch numbers went way down, as if they had left the premises. Now that there are fewer siskins the goldfinches have come back. The first few times I got equal numbers I worried that I was miscounting the birds and I obsessed over counting with field glasses and photographing them, but I finally decided the numbers were correct. Maybe this is some sort of a natural balance of what each species will tolerate nearby? and/or the capacity of the sock feeders? There are mixed flocks at the socks, but usually the goldfinches come first and then the siskins later. On another note, I'm wondering about the capitalization of bird names issue. I have no problem with capitalizing American Goldfinches and Pine Siskins as definitive names, but I would prefer to just say goldfinches and siskins as generic terms. Besides, it's a pain to capitalize and type out the full name when there's no confusion as to what I'm talking about. What do you guys think? Claire (who is known as claire on GW where there's only one of me with this particular name. If there were other GWclaires, it would be different....)

Bob, Great Shot, glad to see some of your finches are already molting to their summer breeding plumage, that means spring is coming,,,Hurrah!! Fortunately we got a nice sunny 35degF day today so I was able to get a shot from my bedroom window showing my whole feeder setup. The first shot is looking east from my bedroom window. In this shot you can see my seed hopper and suet feeders on the Maple tree, which is 60ft from my camera position. This location is working very well because many of the birds roost in the Maple tree during the day. Although you can barely see it in the photo about 20ft to the right of the Hopper there is a 65ft high pine tree that affords great cover for the smaller birds. Ten feet to the left of the Maple tree there is a small Butternut tree that is a favorite roosting place for the Morning Doves. I generally see upwards of 35 doves in that tree each morning. Another 15 ft to the left is a second 60ft Pine tree and behind the feeder sight you can see an 18 acres open meadow. You can see the woods are the far side of the meadow. That woods extends for about a square mile and it is mostly old stand hardwoods. Across the road to the left of this photo is another 300 acre hardwood stand, some new growth near the road, but old stand hardwoods from about 100 feet off the road. In the foreground to the left you can see my old garment hanger with the Niger & mixed seed tubes. On the left end on top you can see the plastic bucket lid that I use for a platform feeder. From my vantage point I generally use a 300mm lens to shoot birds on the hopper, suet feeder or on the ground below the hopper, while I use a 200mm to shoot close ups of the birds on the garment rack feeders. As you can see, all the birds at my feeders seem to play nice and I see very little competition.

chickadeemelrose, I didn't see your last post when I posted last. I guess you are 'at home' working with wire, one of my favorite construction materials. If your jewelry wire isn't stiff or heavy enough to prevent tangling, you can switch to heavier wire. My theory is that the HOSPs are accustomed to flying together with other HOSPs when feeding, so when there is a 'startle' (a possible-predator alert), they expect to fly in unison straight outward, in 'parallel', which doesn't allow for ducking around obstacles. So the halo verticals make them feel caged and vulnerable. I think this explains why the halos don't deter HOSPs from nestboxes, because there they act as individuals. The other species act as individuals, not mobs, when feeding. The halos, especially when made with visible, stiff verticals properly spaced, will also deter starlings and grackles because birds with longer wingspans find it awkward to fly between the verticals. Unfortunately, this includes bluejays and cardinals. My guess is that it is less a problem for more agile fliers such as woodpeckers,which are accustomed to flying upside down and sideways (briefly) when needed. If the verticals are removable, it would provide an option to removing the entire halo when you want to do this. My feeders are so high that I need a small ladder to add or remove a halo, (but not for taking down a feeder). Also, I make the halo so that I can take down the feeder for refilling without moving the halo.

It took the birds 6 months to find my nyjer feeder when I first put it out. When they finally found it, the goldfinches attracted other birds to my other feeders. I had them hanging off the bottom of our seldom-used 2nd story deck, so they were semi-shaded. I also made a "bird bath" out of a boot tray - it was less than an inch deep and a good 2' long and about 16" wide. It was black, so I wouldn't put something like that out in the sun. I changed the water and scrubbed it out every day, and "sterilized" with vinegar (and rinsed and scrubbed again) about once a week. I sterilized the scrub brush in a bucket of bleach water overnight before sterilizing the "bird bath" the next day, so that the brush was fresh and clean for the post-vinegar-bath scrubbing. So - the night before, on cleaning day - I dump and scrub the bird bath; then fill it with vinegar; put the brush in the bleach water. Next morning, dump the bleach water and the vinegar thoroughly rinse the brush and let it dry in the sun (helps drive off any remaining chlorine). scrub out with the sterilized brush Thoroughly rinse the bird bath; start over again This winter I hope to make a large ceramic platter (I'm an amateur potter) with a glazed interior that will tolerate being sterilized with a bleach solution. I plan to bury that to it's lip in one of my raised beds and keep it filled with water via a dripper line. I'll make something similar for use as a butterfly puddler. Having a water feature can only help in attracting birds, but patience will help as well. One thing I would suggest is to get rid of the "songbird mix" and feed only black oil sunflower seed, safflower seed, and nyjer (in a tube feeder), in the way of seed. Every "songbird mix" I've ever seen has a high proportion of "junk" seed in it which attracts house sparrows, to your peril. At my former residence, they weren't much of a problem, but here they have mobbed my feeder to the point where I had to stop using it. They even scared my hummers away, as well as the mountain jays, mountain blue birds, and quail. Sadly, their seed scattering ways seemed to actually ATTRACT pigeons, LOL! I'm going to try to put the sunflower seed (which has to be hulled due to the former owner of this place having put in Astroturf - impossible to clean sunflower hulls out of) in a mesh feeder that only clingers can use and see if that helps. Otherwise, it's hummingbird feeders and the quail block, and the nyjer mesh feeders I have, and that's all I'll be able to put out here. Maybe an upside-down tube feeder. But nothing for the house sparrows!