On any given day in the middle of winter, you can look out my kitchen window and see 12-14 kinds of birds: downy and hairy woodpeckers, red- and white-breasted nuthatches, chickadees, mourning doves, cardinals, goldfinches, etc. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but think about it: it’s winter, it’s Minnesota, you’re not wearing too many clothes, and you’re short on groceries. Would you stick around?

I do work hard to keep them here: the last time I looked I had at least eight feeders, not counting the bird bath with the heater. I am also lucky enough to live in a fairly heavily wooded area with big spruces for winter cover, and I’m surrounded by like-minded neighbors who also spend their discretionary income on bird seed. Winter doesn’t give you much variety; you get the occasional gift of redpolls and purple finches (winter finches are particularly fickle), brown creepers or cedar waxwings, but these tend to be one-time sightings and then they’re history.

Spring, on the other hand, is all about glorious excess. If you’re a fan of variety and numbers, spring migration is cake on a plate. As birds pour through from south to north, any bird can end up anywhere. And they do. And you don’t have to do anything to make it happen. On a good warbler day in May, you can park yourself in your backyard with a pair of binoculars and see 30 or more species in a couple of hours. You can even sit inside if you want (but you shouldn’t). Spring is the time when, if you keep a backyard bird list, you can run out of ink. And be happy about it.

It’s true that some of what you will and will not see is determined by local geography, but there are things you can do to make your yard a better place for birds. First of all, and here’s the plant sale tie-in–plant some fruit-bearing trees and shrubs. Preferably native, although even buckthorn, that scourge of plant ecologists, does a great job of providing winter sustenance for robins. I’m not advocating buckthorn, I just happen to have a lot of it. I wish I had flowering crabapples, serviceberries, highbush cranberries, pie cherries, grey dogwoods…

Second, provide some water, preferably water that makes a little noise and is nice to look at. There is all sorts of technology for this: ponds, drippers, birdbaths, etc., and you can make it as complicated or as easy as you want. Last summer, my water garden consisted of an old rusty bucket with a single flowering water lily–entirely satisfactory.

Third, be a little messy. Neat is not a bird virtue. I have a great yard for sparrows and thrushes because I have a small patch of woods which no one (namely me) considers raking. All through spring I see fox sparrows, hermit thrushes, white-throated sparrows doing their little backwards kick dances looking for food under the leaves. Dead leaves, brush piles, dried seed heads, etc. all provide food and cover that tend to be missing from urban gardens.

Last, keep your cat inside. I like cats as much as anyone, but cats have this ability to make living birds dead, and one of the immutable tenets of birding is that you can’t put a dead bird on your life’s list. Here’s an estimate: domestic cats in the United States kill approximately 638 million songbirds annually. That’s a lot of biomass. And staying indoors is better for your cat, too. Remember, a bird in the bush is worth a whole lot more than two in the paw.