A surprise request came in to my mailbox several days ago. The real estate firm Redfin asked me to contribute some words of advice on how to attract birds to your yard.
I’d been considering a post on that very topic, so here’s what I submitted:
We’ve set up a triangle that attracts a colorful variety of birds to the yard at our suburban home. We started with a spring-loaded, squirrel-proof barrel feeder, the best choice if you can only do one feeder. We added a bird bath and then a double-hook pole with a finch feeder and a suet feeder. In the summer we swap a hummingbird feeder for the suet feeder, and in winter we put an ice melter in the bird bath.
The birds move from station to station as they please, and it pleases us to watch what shows up over the course of a year, cardinals and woodpeckers year-round and the occasional surprise visitor like the indigo bunting or rose-breasted grosbeak. Keep a bird book handy or get the Merlin bird ID app. You’ll be delighted with what you see!
A hummingbird buzzed our living room window last night, reminding me its time to put that feeder out. I’m actually going to put it on another shepherd’s hook we bought. I don’t dare shut down the suet feeder, as I’ll risk attack from the birds who chow down on it daily.
Topping this post is one of my all-time favorite photos, showing a house sparrow waiting as patiently as a sparrow can (which isn’t much!) for a red-bellied woodpecker to exit our Squirrel Buster feeder.
Here’s the Redfin blog post by Redin’s Ryan Castillo, to whom I’m grateful for the opportunity to contribute. His post includes a reference to my advice on squirrel-proof feeders.
The Jersey Birder 
I think it would also be good to advise people to concentrate on bird friendly native plants, minimizing sod and the use of insecticides, etc. Plus: keep the cats indoors!.
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Right you are. We follow those ideas (even if our spice bushes crashed and burned). And if we see a cat, we shoo it away.
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