Contributed by weirdbird
First, a challenge: can you spot the bird in the picture? Look carefully...
The tree shown in this picture, which blooms every other spring to give little fruits, attracts a wide variety of birds including: house finches, cedar waxwings, cardinals, crows, starlings, black-capped chickadees, American goldfinches (one year) etc. Squirrels and chipmunks also come.Here is a relatively grainy picture of a cedar waxwing that came to visit the same tree in the month of June last year. The cedar waxwings have been coming regularly to our region in the last 5 or 6 years or so, but only very temporarily. I see them for a couple of weeks or a month or so in the springtime, but after that, they're off. They come only for the little fruits in ours trees. They seem to be perfectly in tune with nature as they come just at the right time to get the fruit when they're all nice and red. If you want to attract birds in your backyard, the best way of doing so, in my opinion, is to plant a tree that makes small berry-like fruits. You'll be attracting tons of birds, but you have to be patient and observe carefully, otherwise you won't distinguish the huge variety that will be coming to visit your backyard.
Here's a hint for the challenge above:
I'm not 100% sure what kind of bird this is, but my guess is that it's a house finch. This picture was taken on the 1st of July last year.