Bobbi Cowley prepared a feast fit for a tiny visitor at her garden. She suspended a red feeder full of sugar-water solution at one side of her back door, and a hanging basket filled with red-flowering annuals at the other.

Birds flock to her garden during the year. From her kitchen table, Cowley has a front-row seat for their unscripted theatrics: a tufted titmouse investigating water dripping into a birdbath; goldfinches squabbling over thistle seeds in black-and-yellow hanging feeders; a cardinal checking the nesting potential of an evergreen shrub.

Some 45 species hang out regularly in this part of Chester County, Pa., Cowley estimates, and most find their way to her garden. That's because she maintains birdbaths, birdhouses, and feeders that offer seeds, suet, fruits and nuts - even a dish of wriggling mealworms for songbirds that like their tidbits alive.

"If you want to attract birds to your garden," Cowley said, "you have to provide food, water and shelter."

Edie Parnum's approach is a bit different. Although she hangs some feeders around her property in Wayne, Pa., Parnum also gardens for the birds, growing native plants to provide food throughout the season - whether it's the seeds, fruits and berries the native plants produce, or the insects attracted to them.

"Pay attention to what the birds are eating in your yard, and then provide more of that," said Parnum, a member of the Valley Forge Audubon Society.

Parnum crowds plants close together to provide nesting sites and cover. It is not the style of most serious gardeners, she admits, but it creates a habitat that helps keep songbirds safe from predators.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's most recent figures, nearly 53 million Americans feed wild birds near their homes, and about 13 million "maintain plantings or natural areas for the benefit of wildlife."

Count a lot of gardeners among them. Workshops and lectures on how to garden for wildlife are increasing in popularity, said Nancy Beaubaire of Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve in Bucks County, Pa. Web sites are proliferating, and publishers are pumping out how-to books.

Many people will tell you they feed birds for the enjoyment they get out of watching them.

"We're doing this because we want them to be around us," said Cowley, who carries binoculars in her apron pocket when she gardens and talks about birds to children's groups and garden clubs for the Wild Bird Center in Wayne, a specialty shop where she works part time.

Hummingbirds, which can live several years, return to the same locale for breeding, and when migrating they will use the same stopover places, Parnum said. "So it's a good idea to put feeders up early and leave them up late, so migrating hummingbirds will come