Jane, if you only have one feeder out, you might try a good mixture with black oil sunflower seeds stirred into it. Don't get the cheapie kind with those little reddish-brown "BB's" in it. I have never seen ANYTHING actually eat those. I get mine at PetSmart, and I really love the Stokes mixture that has no hulls in it. I feed it, black oiler sunflowers and safflower seed. Safflower seed goes into a feeder that doesn't have squirrel protection, because they don't really like it, but cardinals and titmice do. HOWEVER, no matter what you are feeding, there will be times when birds are not around for various reasons. I have hardly any right now, mostly due to a pair of hawks hanging about our neighborhood. And even without the hawks, birds often disappear for a few weeks now and then. One more thing...don't forget that WATER is probably even more important than seed in luring birds to your yard. You'll notice that most of Maureen's pictures feature her great birdbath. Be sure to provide several "baths" around the yard. They can be anything from decorative features to trashcan lids on the ground with 2" of water in them. I often turn clay pots upside down and put a clay saucer on top for water. Keep the water CLEAN and shallow, maybe even adding a rock in the center for birds to stand on. Good luck! Marcia

I had a dove nest in an epiphyllum plant I had hanging under a porch roof. Like your bird - dry and safe location. What I did to water was water v-e-r-y slowly, and not have the water stream hit the dirt by the nest (big pot, nest didn't cover the entire surface). I watered often enough that I didn't need to stand there too long, and I could get slightly different parts of the pot each time. 3 or 4 sets of doves hatched from that pot over 2 years! Luckily, being a succulent, it didn't need the copious watering that my fuchsias always have, but that IS how I handled the situation. Funny enough, that plant grew like nobody's business, and got huge, and bloomed vigorously during the dove 'tenancy'.

No catherinet- I saw the hawk eat the bird food seed and suet. The brown area he is standing on is a pile of no mess bird seed with suet chunks. I trust my eyes but since it was so unusual I wanted to double check. The only thing the hawk was killing that morning was the bird seed.

It doesnt sound like the Carolina Wren or the mockingbird unless its repeating a louder and more annoying call than the ones on the website lol. I would love it, if it was Screech Owls. I have seen them around but they sound different than what we are hearing. We also have a big nesting of Barred Owls in the woods behind us and they get in the trees by our bedroom window and put up a racket of monkey noises some nights. They are hysterical. I hear them some afternoons too in the little meadow area between us and a neighbor. It sounds closest to a cardinal mating call but it consistently has only two "notes"/syllables to the call with the second being a slightly higher pitch than the first. It waits a few seconds before repeating it. It Doesn't sound like a typical chirpy songbird or a crow or hawk etc. It does sound a little astroid or video gameish but it is loud! I guess I should get some binoculars so I can try and see it. Maybe some small ones w a camera in them so I can take a photo and then I can look it up. This has been going on for several years every spring so its probably a mating call of something lol. I will have to look at reviews on amazon lol.