I've got cardinals, mourning doves, goldfinches, sparrows, black capped chickadees, I hear blue jays but they've snubbed my feeders thus far... and I still have grackles and starlings showing up. I used to have downy woodpeckers but have not seen or heard them this year, and I have not seen any hummingbirds yet. I did laugh when my husband's friend (who was over for dinner yesterday) looked at my nyger feeder, pointed and told his son, "Look, there's an oriole!" It was a goldfinch. And, much to my dismay, we had a sparrow fly into the door yesterday morning and die. We have done everything to reduce this -- moved the feeder further to the right, away from the flightpath; put one of those bird stickers on the window; left the glass rain-spotted for a while to break up the reflection. We had gone a long time without any deaths.

The soil by the marsh is definitely on the low side of the ph scale and has some salt to it, but not as much as if the water actually touched it. Only in an extremely heavy rain at high tide will the water come up into my yard and then only to the point of saturation, not flood. I don't think it is technically salty soil. Guess I'll find out once I plant. Part of my project involves errosion prevention. The yard slopes down to where the marsh is, and quickly drops about 4' to where the water begins. There already is about a 10' deep swath of that tall marsh grass, so that part was already provided by mother nature. I just want to bring more habitat up into my yard where I don't want to spend time mowing. The area's about 30' across and 15' deep. Ideally I would like plants that have extensive root systems to keep the soil where it is. There is a ton of bird wildlife around back there. Great Egrets, Blue Herons, ducks, geese, gulls, and a zillion other little guys that I have yet to identify. Heck, if the babies weren't so loud at feeding time, I'd erect an osprey platform back there too! I'm very excited about providing more food and shelter sources for what's already back there. I spent 3 back breaking seasons clearing out all of the invasive vines and prickers. Now I'm finally to the fun stuff. I'm sure digging is going the be a PITA, but I'm sure it will be worth it.

Jeff-that would be my guess too. They have a unique way they bob their tail when they are sitting on a branch or line. We always get a mom that nests under our carport (Central Illiniois) and it is fun to watch how many bugs she brings back to feed the babies. Kara

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!