Several years ago, my first wife and I were living in a sprawling 500 unit apartment complex in Haward, California. The complex had acres of lawns, blacktop and concrete. It was landscaped with trees, shrubs and english ivy. We had a small private patio, that probably measured 6 ft by 10 ft so we decided to put up a hopper feeder on the fence. We filled the feeder with birdseed and waited. Nothing happened. We didn't have a single bird come to our feeder. That bird feeder sat full and unvisited for the better part of a year.
Then one day, we noticed a house finch at the feeder. Soon we were seeing a steady flow of white crowned sparrows, golden crowned sparrows, scrub jays and purple finches visiting our feeder.
By the time that we moved out of that complex several of our neighbors had bird feeders and we were going through 10 pounds of birdseed a week!
I guess the message is, 'if you fill it, they will come'. Though, it might take awhile for the word to get out.
