Just an observation for this winter being different. Previous years the sunflower seed and suet cakes were the most attractive to birds, cob corn for the squirrels. This year completely different. The 120# sunflower we got a couple months ago looks like most of it will be leftover for next year, and what's going for it seems to be limited to squirrels, jays and woodpeckers (and we don't have many of any of them). The original pair of suet cakes have been barely eaten. The jays are going through the corn cobs like crazy, but the squirrels are ignoring it. The mixed seed is going like crazy, DW's getting 2-3 big sacks (25 or 40#) a week.

Interesting DCmac-
This is only our 2nd winter here at this place and we have very large windows to watch our feeders with-
We seem to have some of the same kinds of birds minus jays, sparrows, and zero squirrels.
Not enough trees I suppose to provide cover from hawks and coyotes in past years.
Didn’t see a common rabbit until the first year, now we see many of them, although we have seen many jackrabbits, surprisingly-
But to your post, we too are using more regular bird seed than sunflower seeds, it was opposite at the place we came from-

We have a ton of birds in our backyard. They are going through seed like water.

Doves, Bluejays, finches of a few varieties, Juncos, wrens, Cardinals.

Cardinals and dove kinda run the place here. We get a LOT of different birds out here on our place but cardinals and dove seem to control the feeders here. We have Fat Mike the squirrel and a few of his buddies but they don't eat till Fat Mike is done eating.

Please gently pass on to Fat Mike and his crew that several of his cousins have gone on to that big Acorn factory in the sky and to stay out of Liquor City if they like their nuts.

Those green finches are cool looking. Haven't seen them before.

A few of Fat Mike's homies have gotten squished up the road as you turn onto Hwy 380. I figured they either were the slow runners or they were taken out by a rival squirrel crew.

American Finches and some Gold Finches. Rare too are Purple Finches and we have seen a few of them as well.

Carolina Chickadees too.

I have those here too Bob but I didn’t know what kind of bird they were-
Thanks

At least that is my amateur take on what they are. They don't stay on the feeder long. They typically will fly to the feeder, grab a seed and fly up to the branches to eat it. If there are finches on the feeder, two chickadees will dive bomb the finches to get them to move. Fun to watch em. I have a pretty good HD video camera that I will take video and then do frame grabs from the video to get these photos. These were all from the past 2 or 3 days here.