Tony, I'm with you. I have never had any luck with suet of any type or recipe in Florida. I DO think you are more likely to succeed with it in cooler weather because the birds need a much higher energy type food then. And also because many types of suet cakes and mixtures spoil quickly in the heat. But even in winter, my woodpeckers prefer to eat sunflower seeds directly from the tray feeder, and they ALL ignore the suet. I do buy the big SEED cakes (BirdOla, etc) that just look like lots of seeds, peanuts and fruit somehow molded into a large square. You probably know what I mean...there's no suet that you can see, just the seeds & fruit bits. I put that in a wire holder designed just for it, and the goldfinches will eat from that, until it gets too small for their short beaks to reach it through the wire. They still drop shells and a little bit of seed under the feeder, but they can't fling it all over while looking for something they like, so it's much less messy. My goldfinches finally showed up about 3 weeks ago, and I've had as many as 30 in the yard at once. There are at least 4 that are almost completely yellow and black now. Just gorgeous. I haven't seen any buntings or grosbeaks this year, though. And the chipping sparrows left right when the goldfinches showed up. But I'm happy...I have my cardinals back, my white-winged doves are here, and my goldfinches. My seed-eating catbird and my seed-eating Myrtle warbler both left, after stuffing themselves for several weeks. (They obviously didn't get the memo telling them they prefer insects and fruit.) I'm really happy now that the squirrels can't seem to reach the feeders any more. (Still knocking wood, though.) Try one of the big seed cakes and see if you like it! Marcia

I used to have bird feeders, but not since we have had an active population of black bears. While I like having them around, I don't want to train them to think that our house = food. Although the bears hibernate, they are awake before there are many food sources for seed eaters, and I hate to habituate the birds to my feeders and then have to remove them in early spring. I do want to put out a heated bird bath for winter, though, and may try a suet feeder since about the time I would have to bring in the feeder due to the bears waking up, there would be insects available for the suet eaters. We do have a lot of birds, but they don't spend as much time near the house as they would if we had feeders. I do plant for the birds and often have nests in shrubs near the house, seed eating birds on plants where I've let the seed heads stand, and insect eaters in the shrubbery. Purple martins eat flying bugs, so that is one of the reasons folks put up houses for them. Since you plan to put up bird houses, read up about the requirements for a house that the birds will use, the preferred size openings for different birds, and how best to site them since different types of birds look for different set-ups. Here's some general information on bird houses from the National Wildlife Federation: http://www.nwf.org/How-to-Help/Garden-for-Wildlife/Gardening-Tips/Attracting-Nesting-Birds.aspx The link below is from Cornell University Lab of Ornithology's Project Nest Watch. If you go to the LEARN tab in the upper right part of the page, there are various articles about bird houses and landscaping for bird habitat that you may find useful. Until you have more shrubs or small trees near your feeders for landing spots, you can put a lage tree branch or old Christmas tree in a pot and fill the pot with rocks or gravel to hold it in place. Here is a link that might be useful: Cornell's Project Nest Watch

I almost posted an observation along these lines several weeks ago. In a one-week span I noticed three separate cowbird chicks all being attended to by blue-grey gnatcatchers. There was always a single cb chick to each set of birds, and never any sign of additional BGGC chicks vying for the food. In that same time span I also noticed a CBchick being fed by a pair of indigo buntings. It's not hard to find them as they are very raucous and conspicuous. I am curious how the numbers and densities of birds most typically affected by CB predations are doing here because we have hordes of cowbirds, yet I always hear/see vireos and thrushes and others that are prime targets for parasitism. I check my nest boxes regularly and destroy any CB eggs in the hopes that at least my small wooded acreage can better sustain songbirds in a time of decline, but we live in farmland with any remaining wooded areas being highly fragmented. Flocks of winter 'blackbirds' are usually groupings of redwings, starlings, grackles and cowbirds fattened up on a steady and readily available farmland diet. I only wonder what our songbird demographics will do in the next few decades.

Thank you for responding, it's been a heavy hearted day. I did take some pics, then I got some waterproof foil tape and wrapped it loosely around the trunk, only adhering the tape back onto itself (so no adhesive on trunk.) We also cut up some holographic poster board into strips and hung strips around the tree...that's supposed to scare the birds off. I took down the feeders completely, with a very heavy heart and will put them back up in a few days....on another area of the property. Unfortunately, I also have another new tree in the backyard which also has lichen growing on it, so I don't want to put those feeders near there. The feeders won't be anywhere in my viewing area, which is a big bummer for me. We couldn't get the reflective tape or holographic strips and into the upper 3rd of the tree and we saw a woodpecker land...however, the bird left soon thereafter, since there was no food around. At the same time, we saw a male and female Baltimore Oriole land on the tree and I just about swooned...we have not seen them before! I do think I could get some orange out for them and the woodpeckers would not be interested, right?