my neighbors & I are dealing with this now only it's a little sparrow....it's the same sparrow who has been walking around more than flying all winter. It flies to the scrub trees on our property line & sits & then comes down to my neighbors car. When she leaves it goes to mine, mine leaves it goes to my other neighbor. We all live in close proximity. All other times it stays at my neighbors chimney....Long , silver & very reflective. It also pecks at our house windows & all windows of the cars. The poop is ridiculous. Two of us have bags on our mirrors but it doesn't much help as it goes to the other windows. It's a pain in the butt having to either wash the car or remove & retie the bags all the time. I tried putting a mirror on the end of the deck, where the bird can surely see it but it hasn't worked yet. We are going crazy! P.S. I tried the mirror in our tree where the bird feeders are but removed it as a woodpecker darn near drove itself crazy by flitting at it for a solid afternoon. Worried about it harming itself I removed it. At wits end in Nova Scotia.Bird vs mirror

Ian, those are sapsuckers. They do not girdle the trees although it looks pretty close sometimes. They are drilling for sap, much like tapping a maple to make syrup, except the sapsuckers eat the insects that are attracted to the sap. Hummingbirds also I've heard are attracted to the sapsucker holes for the insects. It looks like it must be damaging, and it's definitely an open wound, but I've never seen a tree killed or seriously damaged by sapsuckers, and they're pretty birds. They go for the sweet-sapped trees mainly like birch and alder and aspen and maple. Are birds 'good' or 'bad' for trees?? aren't they pretty much made for each other?? Trees live in a world filled with birds, and birds live in a world filled with trees. Although trees as a whole predate birds by millions of years, trees and birds get along pretty well together, and they've lived together for much longer than we've been around. It's a myth that birdfeeders will spoil the birds so they won't eat insects. Most insect eating birds don't eat birdseed, for one thing. Conversely, birdfeeders don't attract most insect eating birds except for chickadees. Suet feeders, and birdbaths most of all, will attract more of the insect eaters. The weight of birds damaging trees? I wouldn't think so. Birds don't weigh hardly anything, their bones are hollow, and under those feathers there's hardly any bulk left, it's all fluff. And birds get off if a branch sways too much under their weight. Birds need trees, and trees need birds. I agree that the trees seem cheered by birds in them, even when the birds are eating all the flower buds so fruit won't set. That's what the finces do to my cherry trees, they gather by the dozens just as the flower buds are swelling, but who cares? finches are pretty and sing nice, and there's too many tiny little cherries on these trees anyway, they're a nuisance, might as well go to the birds as drop stones on the lawn for me to step on and the dogs to eat and plug up their guts. I read once that in Europe it's considered a good omen if a bird lights on a newly planted tree. Sounds like you have a yard full of good omens. Are you keeping a life list of the birds you see?

I've been enjoying the birds eating from my hand and off my hat as I walk around the yard for years. Chickadees are the easiest, but if I lean on a tree, the nuthatches will come hop-hop-hopping down the tree to my hat, or run down my arm, or go looking in my pocket for the cache of sunflower seeds they know are there, but they'll never fly directly to you and land ON you, like the chickadees - always above on a tree & then they hop down onto me. The chickadees are so bold they land on me in droves, but are actually usually quite polite. They'll perch on shoulders & arms, waiting to grab a seed, each in their turn, from my hand or hat. If I put my hand flat against my chin with knuckles up, like a landing pad, and put a single sunflower seed between my lips, the chickadees will land & take the seed from between my lips, like they're giving me a kiss. I had an idea that I'll work on. I'll fill a beer can with seed and tip it so the chickadees will reach in to grab a seed. It'll look like they're having a beer with their buddy in the back yard, and I'm sure I can come up with a caption when I get around to working on the shot. Al

towhees are mostly ground feeders and you see them scratching under shrubs and bushes eating seeds and plant bits i toss a little mixed seed under the shrubs in my yard for them Tanagers love fruits and necter and shrubs with berrys or flowering plants with blooms