Nice! I'm looking forward to spring as well. Here's my back yard. This is last fall after I finished planting the back of the yard. It's on the edge of the property looking toward the house. In the foreground are two nannyberry shrubs (a viburnum related to cranberry) and then an area where I've planted a prairie garden and covered it with compost. You can see where I've left space for a path to walk through, and I plan to put a bench there. Back towards the house there is where the garden starts, and I had started planting there last year. It's nice in the summer sitting out on the patio, where I can watch the bird feeders and enjoy being surrounded by native plants. The area where I'm standing, with the nannyberry and the small post right beyond it, used to be completely infested with buckthorn and many invasive weeds. It took me 2 years to clear it all out. Now that the area is opened up a bit, I'm hoping that I'll have bluebirds nesting again (saw many here during fall migration.) I left this post standing as a spot for the bluebirds to perch, and to hang a nice sign. The post used to be completely obscured by buckthorn.

i live in southwest Colorado and get mostly evening grosbeaks and black headed grosbeaks and once in awhile a pine grosbeak. Back where you are you should get the rose breasted and the pine and the evening grosbeaks. here they come to the feeders starting in late april and nest nearby and stay till fall when they migrate south. they all love nuts and most seeds and fruit and berrys and mine love hulled sunflower seeds and boss and also the eat from a fruit tray with chunks of diced fruit and drink from the necter feeders. they hang around the same areas here as the orioles and tanagers and often see them feeding at the same feeders. i get bags of peanuts or spanish peanuts from a farm and ranch store and they can chomp down and break up bigger pieces of cracked corn because of their heavy beaks. but they also drink orange juice and eat the grape jelly often sharing with the orioles. and drink from the hummingbird or oriole necter feeders.

Nice picture! However, your bird is a Black-headed Grosbeak...but still cool none-the-less! BN

maybe a better view Here is a link that might be useful: