I thought I’d post a picture or two of our backyard so you can see what we have as far as an environment for birdwatching. Here is a view of our backyard from the driveway. 
As you can see we have a lot of trees in the yard. It is mainly a mix of Pine and Sweet gum. There are a couple of Oak and Hickory (I think) trees as well. The big tree to the right of the feeders is a Sweet gum. As far as bushes go, the primary one is Azaleas (right behind the feeders). The birds hide in there and dart out to grab some food. As you can see the ground below the feeders is covered with leaves. The brown thrashers, towhees, and fox sparrows love to kick around in the leaves looking for whatever it is they look for, mostly grubs and insects I think. The yard is fully surrounded with a fence which I think helps keep predators (cats, etc.) away.
View From Office
We use one of our bedrooms upstairs as the computer room/office. Here’s a couple of shots from there. 
We have a great view of the yard and we are able to view from here without disturbing the birds. Its great when it’s cold. We can see the whole backyard and are able to view the birds as they fly around the yard and scoot in and out of the bushes. You can see that we have another fairly large Azalea on the right side of the yard. Oh, and if you look on the sidebar and see “the Current Weather In Our Backyard” graphic, the weather station that collects all of that is mounted to the top of our deck. So literally, it is the weather in our backyard (I told you I was a bit of a geek 
). The bedroom/office also makes a pretty good spot for taking pictures of the birds. Here is a sample shot.
I have a 2 year old Canon PowerShot S3 IS which is a 6 megapixel camera that has a 12x optical zoom.
This picture was taken using the full 12x zoom. At some point I may get a spotting scope and try to “digiscope” by taking pictures through the scope but for now I’m happy with the results.
Our Feeders
Right now we have 4 active feeders:
- A three tube feeder that we put a mix of black oil sunflower seed and mixed seed.
- A suet feeder that we just put various suet blocks in.
- A niger feeder that gets used a lot more in the Summer.
- A hummingbird feeder that we have attached to the deck right below the weather station. It’s very busy in the summer.
Pam and I are talking about adding another feeder but we’re not sure what to add. We want to add something that will complement our current feeder setup, not duplicate it. If any of you have suggestions we’re all ears.
What About Your Backyard
There you go, a summary of our backyard. We’d love to see some of the other backyards out there. So, post a link to a picture of your backyard or feeders in the comments and share your backyard with the world!
Also, If there is anything else you have done to improve your backyard viewing pleasure please tell us about it in the comments.
