Our yard is normally very birdy. 15-20 species a day is typical. We have a pond and artificial stream. I have feeders up (mixed seed, sunflower, thistle, suet, hummingbird). And my wife has planted quite a few native plants.

Unfortunately, we were out of town Friday thru Friday, missing the snow. I'd turned off the pump for the stream, and the feeders were probably empty by the end of the first weekend. Certainly by the time we got home last night, every last seed was gone, and every scrap of suet.

I filled all of the feeders this morning, turned on the pump for the stream,.and I waited. Two-and-a-half hours later, I'd still only had our resident Spotted Towhee and Song Sparrow, a couple of Anna's Hummingbirds, and some crows flying past. Not a single bird had discovered that the feeders had been refilled.

So I got out my iPod, set it out on the deck, and let it play straight through from Black-capped Chickadee to Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Within 5 minutes, the first chickadees showed up. Then came the Steller's Jays and Northern Flickers (neither of whose calls were played on the iPod), then Red-breasted Nuthatch, etc.

I let the iPod play for maybe 15-20 minutes, and things were back to normal. Dark-eyed Juncos were under the feeder. Even the squirrels had returned.

This afternoon, I realized that the House Finches had not returned to the back yard feeder, so I played that track out the back door. Before the track finished the second time, a House Finch was at the sunflower seed.

For the day, 14 species. I don't think any of them minded the use of the iPod.

== Michael Hobbs
== Kirkland, WA
== http://www.marymoor.org/birding.htm
== http://www.marymoor.org/BirdBlog.htm
== birdmarymoor at frontier.com