The other morning there was a whole flock of robins in my backyard. Don't they know it is not spring yet! There was an ornamental crabapple tree with a little fruit on it that was soon stripped. Daily we have goldfinches, house finches, quail, juncos, sparrows, mourning doves, northern red shafted flickers and magpies. Occasionally we get a downy woodpecker. I haven't seen any chickadees at my house for a long time, but my sister, who lives about 15 miles from us, higher in elevation, saw some earlier this year when we had snow. We also have a squirrel or two. Even though they are messy, especially the quail, I would miss them if they weren't here.

I saw a lovely male cardinal at our pond, yesterday morning. I wish I had my camera with me, but I didn't. Was just letting the dog out, and there he was. He didn't even bat an eye at Jaz, but she also didn't notice him. lol

The goldfinches are going to eat me out of the house, the home goes to the rest of the birds. My son gave me last year a 3' finchfeeder with a spiral running down intstead of perches and lots of openings. That thing got so popular that I had to refill every two days with thistle feed. I finally switched to mixture of finch food and a couple of cups of thistle seed. Mourning doves and cardinals are usually the first visitors in the morning. Most days there are anywhere between 20 and 30 on the early morning shift, 3 pairs stay mosts of the day. The jays come through a little bit later and after the first feeding there are always a couple around to see if I might throw out a handful of peanunts. They then alert the rest of the bunch. Sparrows of all kinds and juncos, as well as rosy and house finches belong to the making the rounds crew. Less predictable are the visits from the grossbeaks and the buntings. The most sociable visitors, besides the squirrels, are the chickadees, nuthatches, titmice and the finally returned downies. The hairy, redbellied and redheaded woodpeckers are more alert to my movements.
If I need entertainment, all I have to do is look or go outside.

I enjoy the birds, sometimes they are the only company i get around here, so i have feeders in both front and back yards..We have about the same birds that you all have, except of course the Robins aren't this far north yet, we won't see them for another month or so.

I think I have mentioned a derth of birds in my yard this year. Last weekend I spotted the reason perched in the dogwood tree. Sharpshin, I think. When the snow melted I found 2 spots back by the compost pile of feathers - bluejay and mourning dove. Don't think it was the outside cat, she doesn't stay out much in the winter or hunts. With the warm-up I have seen a few more birds, chickadee is back.

well unfortunately my cats and others in the neighborhood do hunt, but I try to provide protection to the bird feeders as I prefer they catch mice and other rodents than birds, but as for hawks and eagles we have everything here, even a falcon that thinks my bird feeders are a buffet, but he is a wild falcon so I guess it is his right.

The eagles don't bother anything live here, they just mostly clean up things already killed by some other means.