Thank you! I'm saving this info so I can do this sometime in the Spring, whenever the weather decides to warm up :) !! pkponder ...do you have a picture? Would love to see it. I want to include a Birdhouse and a Birdfeeder. My Birdfeeder is very large and I hung it last summer and was still out till recently when it needed seed and found out the thing broke at the top where you take it off to add seed ... so I'm mounting it on a pole and it will be just fine that way. It is VERY heavy so I can't have a tall pole for it. I included a picture of my bird feeder. It is 13 x 13 and has 9 feeding stations, 11lb capacity. I want to have a birdhouse separate but not too far away. Have an idea to put these alongside our ramp ... will look nice with some vines I think. :) Also, I know this bird feeder can be pole mounted because a couple people told me about how to do it. I saved that info and it says The pipe needs to be no wider than 7/8 of an inch. Anyway, looking forward to mounting that and I have to find a nice bird house to also mount on a pole. We have lots of cats around here (including ours that goes outside) and squirrels, so I might have to figure a way to keep them out.

I can fully understand the desire to create a pleasing appearance on your house. On the other hand, I live alone in a rented room on the back side of a rural house totally out of public view and I have not had a visitor since last September so I am not in the least concerned about what others might think of my arrangement. My principal interest is two fold. Since I retired last June my primary hobby is nature photography and 2. Since the weather is too bad to take long nature walks or sit for hours in the woods, camera in hand, it was my desire to find ways to attract birds and critters of all sorts to a point where I could view them from my window. I began with a simple wooden hopper feeder and a couple suet cages attached to a tree about 50 feet from the window, then I decided I wanted something a bit closer so I took an old pipe garment rack and stood it about 12 ft from the window and hung two tube feeders on it. After noticing that birds liked to perch on the metal rail while waiting their turn at the feeders I got the silly idea to punch a couple holes in an old plastic pail lid and tie it on top of the rack to be used as a tray feeder. I then filled all the bird feeders, poured some seed in the pail lid and sprinkled some excess seed on the ground along with a loaf of stale bread scattered on the ground. Since I began scattering the stale bread the squirrels comes down immediately and grabs a slice of bread, runs up the tree and sits on a limb to eat the bread totally ignoring the bird feeders. The starlings, Doves, Juncos and Hosps seem to prefer eating the bread on the ground so I have very little competition at the feeders, and too top it off, this morning they were joined by two huge crows. Oh yes, did I mention that I also have a small flock of wild turkeys and a couple rabbits that show up occasionally? The more desirable birds, Cardinals, Blue Jays,Chickadees, Finches, Tutti's and Nuthathes seem quite content to feed from either the wooden hopper, plastic tube feeders or the vinyl pail lid and while the Woodpeckers are generally on the suet feeders they are equally happy to grab seed from any of the afore mentioned locations. From my experience it would seem that the key is the volume and availability of the food rather than the type of feeder.

Well good luck with this blizzard. Up here in Boston we are supposed to get just some of the snow you folks are getting. Stay warm!!! Some things that come to mind that people on this forum have mentioned: sandwich bread; cornbread crumbs; dry or cooked cereal; peanut butter spread on a log, or on crackers; cookie or snack crumbs; any suet (fat) you might have left from a roast; raisins, dried cranberries, nuts. You could even make some homemade suet by mixing melted Crisco, flour, oatmeal, peanut butter, raisins or cranberries, and let set until you can put it out in a big pan, where the birds will get it. Good luck!

We live SE of Seattle. When we started feeding birds all our feeders where open to the weather including a platform feeder with a wire bottom for drainage. We had lots of birds. My bride asked if I could make her a hexagon or octagon feeder. I said; "Certainly my dear." I decided I would build a large covered feeder so the birds could come in out of the rain and/or snow mimicking your thoughts. It had a half hexagon hopper on each end for different types of seed and a platform between them. A roof covered the whole thing. We had about a third of the birds we did before. You could not see them well and it was too dark to take pictures. We used it for a couple of years and it didn't get any better. My bride never like it. She showed me a hex feeder picture in a magazine like the one she wanted in the first place. She asked if I would build one like it and get rid of the covered one. I agreed because of the lack of birds using it. I had also come to the reality that the birds have been doing just fine without an umbrella for eons. All you have to do is keep the seeds dry in the hoppers so they won't mold if it gets wet. The seed on a platform, or the ground, is just like the natural seed the birds eat in the rain and snow. We only put out enough for them to eat in a day to keep it from rotting. When it snows, we tamp it down and put more seed on top. As it melts, the birds will find the seed from before. It is too cold for rot or mold to be a problem. The new open feeder took less than a couple of weeks for the birds to get back too and surpass the numbers we had before the covered feeder. We have our hummingbird feeders under the eves near windows for two reasons. We can see them thru the windows and the feeders stay a little warmer for the Anna's when the temperature gets below freezing. Next time it rains, look at the birds. They go about their business like they do when it's dry. They must to survive. If you ever see a wet bird, it is ether sick and/or hasn't maintained it's feathers or it just took a bath. Your open feeders will be fine. Enjoy your birds, Bob