This seems to be a popular topic.  We have one humming bird feeder, one 
columnar “squirrel buster” bird feeder with hulled sunflower seeds, a plate 
on a back stone wall with Safeway bird seed and two suet feeders and a bird 
bath, all in close proximity. Presently we have countless goldfinches, also 
house finches, house sparrows, chickadees, titmice, cardinals, catbirds, 
grackles, starlings, occasional robin, Carolina wren, house wren, ruby 
throated humming birds and doves. The humming birds can be seen resting 
often on a near by perch digesting the feeder nectar. Also, recently both a 
mature and an immature towhee, the latter a regular. It’s particularly 
interesting because although I’ve seen many towhees, rarely, however this 
close and to be examined at leisure. It has a dramatic black tail with 
bright white peripheral tail feathers. Woodpeckers: We’ve had for a number 
of years a pair of Pileated come in calling, sit warily on a close by ash 
trunk, and then come to the suet feeder. They still show up but silently. 
In addition, two immatures, obvious from the less dense black of the back 
and slimmer profiles. We’ve had a male hairy for a while, but now two 
immatures with small forward red head patches still associating with a 
parent. We also have the rather similarly sized and beaked redbellies, 
mature male and female and now immature young. Both the immature hairy and 
the redbellies  like the columnar seed feeder see in addition to the suet 
feeders. We, of course, have downies and their young. There is definitely a 
pecking order for the woodpeckers. The downies giving way to the larger 
billed hairys and redbellies and all giving way to the piliateds..  

The ‘squirrel buster” columnar feeder does to good a job. It’s the kind 
with a central rod and spring-loaded closings that close when two heavy an 
object is at a perch. Three times now one of the rather stupid this year’s 
squirrels has managed to open the conical cap and squeezed itself in the 
feeder. They then have to be shaken out. I have a short video that I’ve 
attached. I don’t know if it will work –perhaps in the individual e-mails.

In additions to the resident squirrels we have what I think are migrating 
squirrel. A beautiful silver black gray –gray squirrel (like a silver fox) 
in the patio for one day. We also saw once a squirrel with a bright yellow 
belly. I can only think it was a fox squirrel although it did not seem 
particularly large. Other animals, two diligent hoarding chipmunks (they 
don’t get along). Raccoons that keep on trying to take the columnar feeder 
down. They absconded with one –never to be seen again. A gorgeous  red fox  
lying on the mulch bed. A herd of seven white tails, including two bucks , 
earlier in the year, browsing at the edge of the small yard. A pair of red- 
shouldered hawks started a nest clearly visible in high in a tree.  After 
several days they decided to take it down apparently moving it elsewhere.

In the spring we have wood-thrushes call and sometimes visible in the 
brush. In the winter we had a number of brown creepers. For two seasons we 
had a returning wintering hermit thrush though not this year. 

The patio and adjacent yard overlooks a narrow valley with a small 
tributary of  the Mini-ha-ha creek that enters the Potomac below the Glen 
Echo Park parking lot. Squeezed between Goldsboro and Macarthur-the whole 
valley maybe 5 acres but with mature trees.