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.

Thanks, Claire, both for answering my question and for researching local information sources. NH Audubon & NH F&G are both within about 20 minutes of my house. Silly me, I didn't even think to check local sources of info or even Google, just started with GW. ;>) I actually don't mind the bears or the coyotes or any other critters. Having grown up in the suburbs, I like sharing the woods and fields with such a wonderful range of wildlife. I did stop walking in the woods in the really early morning, however, after I startled a large deer one morning in a brushy wooded area. It gave a loud snort, and in the instants before I saw it was a deer, I did have a brief moment of concern - what would I do if it were the bear?! In reality, I have more to be concerned about with the occasional moose, as the bears really don't want to meet people (I just have to make noise so they know I'm coming & they will take off) whereas the moose are big enough to not care and can be aggressive. (We still have those pesky red squirrels, though . . . )

Because the others are females and they are his harem? Maybe all the other males are out buying beer for Super Bowl Sunday? Maybe all the other males are sleeping off their pre-Super Bowl party celebrations last night? I don't know why you only have one male, but here at our house the females always outnumber the males. Often the males eat early in the day and the females eat later. Female redwings don't really look that much like the males, so it is easy to tell that you have more females than males. Lots of people don't even realize the females are female redwings and think they are something else. Yesterday, in a rather odd form of behavior, the males were going mad over the cattail seedheads, and the females weren't. I have no idea what that means. I see a pretty similar gender segregation with the cardinals too. The males come in big groups of 10 or 12 or 15 to eat. Later on, the females come in smaller groups of 2, 3, 4 or 5. I wonder why. Finally, how about the deer and the way they feed. Our does and fawns, even the young males, come together in a group. They eat first. The minute our really big buck shows up, all the others scatter. It isn't that the buck is aggressive and pushes them away from the food. In fact, he stands in the neighbor's pasture about 20' from where the deer are feeding and waits patiently. He never comes to the food and nudges them away from it. However, from the moment he shows up, all the others are antsy and nervous and hungrily snatch a few more bites before quickly leaving together as a group. Respect for the buck's superior size and strength? Fear? Who knows what it is, but it is interesting to watch. Dawn

I would definately go for a variety over a larger feeder. My hopper style feeder is actually the least favorite of all my feeders. It is always the last to be emptied. The tube feeders are the finches favorite. Everybody else seems to prefer the open tray style feeders or feeding off of the ground. Suet feeders and peanut feeders will help you attract that woodpecker, they really like the sunflower too. Black oiled sunflower is the best feed for attracting the most and largest variety of birds by far. I do buy cracked corn and a mix too because they are cheaper and I have a large population of doves, and in the spring, summer, redwinged blackbirds and grackles. They will eat the cheaper seed and it helps cut the cost a bit. Otherwise they'd be perfectly happy to fill up on black oiled sunflower too! LOL