After a Minnesota winter, our front yard was a mess.

[MineralMan]

12. Be patient and your friend will come.

I learned to attract birds to my hand when I was about 10 years old. We were at Yosemite and a naturalist there had all sorts of birds flying down to his hand. After the talk, I asked him how he did that, and he told me what to do. I tried it at home and found out that it worked pretty well, especially with finch-like birds and jays.

One of the things the naturalist told me was that humans have predator eyes, so not looking at the bird is important.

Good luck.