5 Things That Turn a Yard Into a Bird Yard

The pick

Squirrel Buster Standard

$58.75 on Amazon

An unprotected feeder feeds three squirrels and zero birds by the second week. The Squirrel Buster's perch ring closes the seed ports under a squirrel's weight - no batteries, no spinning, just a mechanism that has annoyed squirrels reliably for twenty years while the chickadees eat in peace.

Hang it four feet from anything a squirrel can leap from - ten-foot jumps are routine.

The pick

All-Metal Double Suet Feeder

$14.39 on Amazon

Seed brings the finches; fat brings the woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees, especially in the cold months when insects vanish and a suet cake is the richest meal in the neighbourhood. A cage feeder costs almost nothing and hangs anywhere - downies and hairies first, and if you are lucky, a pileated.

Plain or hot-pepper suet in summer heat; cheap cakes turn rancid on a warm fence.

The pick

Bird Feeder Pole with Baffle

$85.99 on Amazon

Feeders hung from trees feed squirrels; feeders on bare poles feed climbing rat snakes and raccoons. A pole system with a torpedo baffle below the feeders is the arrangement that actually works, and it puts the feeder where you watch it from the kitchen window instead of where a branch happened to be.

Ten feet from cover: close enough to flee a hawk, far enough to see one coming.

The pick

100W Bird Bath De-Icer

$27.99 on Amazon

Bluebirds, waxwings and warblers may never touch a seed feeder, but every bird drinks. In winter, open water is scarcer than food - a small thermostatic de-icer keeps the bath liquid through hard freezes for pennies, and the busiest bird-bath day of the year is regularly a ten-degree one.

Shallow matters more than heated: an inch or two, with a rock to stand on.

The pick

Kaytee No-Mess Blend, 9.75 lb

$20.73 on Amazon

Budget seed is padded with milo and cracked corn that most songbirds kick to the ground, where it moulds and pulls in rodents - the cheap bag feeds the lawn. A no-mess blend of hulled sunflower and peanuts is eaten entirely: more birds per pound, nothing sprouting under the feeder.

Straight black-oil sunflower is the budget version every desirable bird accepts.