By Anne Schmauss

For The New Mexican

It's almost show time!

Winter is over. Despite a couple of brief, bitter-cold snaps, it was really pretty mild. This was the main reason many of you had less bird activity than usual at your feeders. With little snow to cover natural food, birds didn't need to visit your feeder as often. Warm winter temperatures meant birds didn't need as many calories to survive.

Now that spring is here, some of you are reporting more interesting bird activity in your backyard. Keep your eyes peeled for red crossbills. We've had several reports of crossbill sightings from customers at the store in the last couple of weeks. The bird's bill is actually crossed at the tip. We are in their permanent range, but red crossbills are an irruptive species but don't often "irrupt" into our area.

Red crossbills are a little bigger than a house finch and kind of chunky looking. The male is mostly red and the female is a pale yellowish color. The birds use their crossed bills to extract seeds from pine cones, so look for them in heavily treed areas. Crossbills sometimes will come to your seed feeders.

Many of you continue to see the nomadic evening grosbeaks. These gold, black and white birds are large and have a thick and powerful bill capable of crushing any seed or fruit pit. They love sunflower seed and will often show up in small flocks.

They probably won't hang around for too much longer, so enjoy them while you can. Try placing your sunflower, or mix containing lots of sunflower, in a feeder with enough of a tray to accommodate them.

The number one question we are hearing in the store right now is, "When do my hummingbirds come back?" Look for hummingbirds any day now. They start to trickle in at the end of March, but most of us see our first one in mid-April. Go ahead and put your feeder out now in hopes of attracting those early arrivals. But remember, keep your sugar-water fresh, changing it twice a week whether your hummers have visited or not.

Look for the black-chinned and broad-tailed first. The bossy rufous hummingbirds actually migrate north through California to their nesting grounds in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada. We don't see them until they start to head south in mid-July, when they swing through New Mexico.

Even if you are not seeing red crossbills, evening grosbeaks or hummingbirds, you may have noticed an increase in activity at your feeder. Birds need lots of calories during nesting season, so keep feeding them lots of good-quality birdseed packed with lots of sunflower. Don't skip the suet even though it's getting warm. Use a no-melt suet dough when you're regular high-fat suet starts to melt. Your birds need high-fat, high-protein food like suet, peanuts and sunflower this time of year as much as they do in winter.

Also remember water. Not all birds eat seed, and they don't all eat suet — but they all need water every day. We all know how dry it's been. Just think how tough it is for birds to find a nearby, consistent source of clean water. Keep your shallow bath full and fresh, and consider adding another water source.

We are on the verge of my favorite birding time of year: spring migration. Soon the western tanagers, lesser goldfinches, Bullock's orioles and many more colorful songbirds begin to return. I'll write about them all right here.

Anne Schmauss is the co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Santa Fe. She is the co-author, with her sisters, of the book For the Birds: A Month by Month Guide to Attracting Birds to Your Backyard. Her articles also appear in Birds and Blooms magazine.