On occasion, customers tell me that they only see sparrows and house finches at their backyard feeders. After a few questions about their feeders and seed, I usually know why. Often they are feeding low-quality birdseed, containing fillers like milo, and sometimes they have four or five seed feeders, all with the same food. It's no wonder they have all the same birds. Not all birds like the same food, so it's good to mix it up a bit. Variety is the spice of life. It's easy to make a few changes in your backyard and attract a wider variety of birds.

Keeping this in mind is important when shopping for you, but also for the bird lover on your holiday list. Choosing the right gift for a backyard birder can help them to attract new and different birds to their backyard and enrich their lives. If someone already has several seed feeders, consider buying them a specialty feeder to help them increase their variety of birds. Adding a suet feeder might help lure woodpeckers and bushtits; a thistle feeder might attract goldfinches and pine siskins, and a seed cylinder might bring in both seed- and suet-eating birds.

If you want to introduce someone to feeding the birds, it's best to get them a general seed feeder that attracts common birds like house finches, this way you can be sure they will have lots of bird activity. Other birds will come, too. Sixteen years ago, when I started feeding the birds, I bought a basic tube feeder and filled it with a good seed mix, loaded with plenty of black-oil sunflower. It was a perfect way to start — and it still is.

A hopper-style seed feeder is also a good first feeder and works very well to attract a nice variety of birds. Hoppers often hold a lot of seed and give plenty of perching room for small and large birds. They are usually made of wood, but in the last few years hopper feeders made of recycled plastic milk jugs have become quite common. The idea of cutting down trees to make birdfeeders never seemed quite right to me so I have loved all the new recycled products in the world of bird feeding.

Birdseed might seem a bit mundane as a gift — but believe me, bird lovers can never get enough of it. Be sure to choose quality birdseed with plenty of black-oil sunflower seeds and no fillers. A few added nuts and suet balls makes a birdseed blend a little more special and can attract more birds.

Whether your bird lover is a real expert or a novice, there are wonderful books to help them identify or attract a wider variety of birds. My favorite bird identification field guide is the Sibley Guide to Western Birds. Its drawings are superb. Birds of New Mexico is a smaller, simpler guide to bird ID but also quite good — especially for beginners. My sisters and I wrote a book a year ago titled For the Birds that gives month-by-month advice for attracting birds. I also helped to write a new DVD, called Attracting the Best and Brightest Backyard Birds. Partially filmed in Santa Fe, this DVD gives your bird lover tips and tools to attract more birds. The filmmaker, Steve Maslowski, has put together some fantastic footage of backyard birds.

During this busy season, when none of us has quite enough time, consider taking a few minutes to enjoy the birds at your feeders. Fifteen minutes watching the flicker at my seed cylinder or the mountain chickadee at my suet or a flock of starlings raiding my seed feeder can slow the world down a bit and give me a little perspective.

Anne Schmauss is the co-owner of Wild Birds Unlimited in Santa Fe and the co-author of the 2008 book For the Birds: A Month by Month Guide to Attracting Birds to Your Backyard. She has written for Birders' World magazine and has been heard locally on NPR.