Birds are a nuisance in my garden when my plants are young. They will pull up or peck off all my seedlings if I don't cover everything with bird netting. Now that things are established, my netting is gone. I see them hopping around the beds, but they don't bother anything. I've never had them peck at my tomatoes, but I've heard from people who think they do. So...take your pick. I do have a bird bath in my garden. I don't keep it full at planting time, as I don't care to encourage them until my plants are big enough to handle having them around. As for putting feeders in your garden, on the opposite side of my house I have an actual bird garden, with several feeders, another bird bath, and shrubs and trees planted specifically with a bird habitat in mind. I absolutely love it--it's the view out my kitchen window. But the birds make a MESS. The area needs to be kept clean, I soak my feeders in a mild bleach solution every couple months. I sweep up and gather the seed shells. Birds carry disease and a poorly kept bird garden can help spread the disease to other birds and humans. The point of all this is that I would never want to put feeders near plants I'm growing for food. A few birds hopping around aren't a big deal, but birds in the volume I get in my bird garden, I wouldn't put anything growing out there in my mouth. They crap on everything. In fact, I garden with gloves and wash my hands after I've been out there. I also have to let my feeders stay empty for several days to keep the bird volumes down. I love them, but when there's a plentiful supply of food for a long period of time, it turns into an Alfred Hitchcock movie out there. Personally, if you're looking for something that eats bugs, I'd try encouraging other beneficial insects by planting marigolds, nasturtiums and other "gardeny" type flowers. And, of course, keep the use of pesticides down.

Elms might be a good choice for attracting insect eating birds. I had some at my previous house, warblers were attracted to them during migration. Some kind of tiny caterpillars would attack them during the summer, and cedar waxwings would feed on them. I noticed phoebes returned here, too - saw a couple by railroad bridges over a creek, assume they are nesting under the bridges.

I got a birdfeeder with a cylindrical baffle as shown by terrene. All cost me $200. My birds have no problem with squirrels which are not able to climb over that baffle. On the birdfeeder I have two dispensers with black sunflower seeds and one with suet. There was no demand for any other birdfood which my birds did not touch or simply shoveled to the ground. Since we view the birds from the kitchen's sliding glass door, over the deck, the feeder was placed about 8-10 ft further from the deck, also sufficiently away from pine branches. Squirrels could not jump to or drop onto the feeder. Prior to that I used a very low cost construction with the same good results : a long fence post with cedar post bolted to it for height, all covered with a 4 inch diameter 5 ft long plastic pipe. I used an upside-down plastic pale as a baffle. (make sure that the pale sits on the pipe, and that the pale has the rim cut off, or squirrels will use it for leverage. Fill up the lower part of the pipe with gravel or mice will climb up inside) Then on top of all you can bolt horizontally some wood to the cedar pole and hang all the feeders from it as you wish.

Texas_Annie: When I lived in Southern California, half of my time gardening was spent dealing with gophers. People in the East have no idea what these little buggers can do! Once, a neighbor and I were growing giant pumpkins for a contest, and as they grew larger and larger, we would try and lift them off the ground a bit, to guess their weight. Ours were each about 150 pounds, or so, until one day when he lifted his pumpkin, it came right up off the ground. Gophers had tunneled in from beneath it, and eaten all its insides out--nothing but a shell remained. This, after 3 months of special care given the pumpkin. I'm sure he would have liked to wring the little critter's neck. They do make traps for gophers that are pretty effective. You open their run (when you see soil piled up) and put the trap in the run, then put a board over it. Lifting the board and checking it periodically should yield a squashed little plant-eater. If you continue doing this for the rest of your life, you'll probably keep the gophers under control.