RINGWOOD According to Judy Cinqina, there are some valid reasons not to feed birds during the winter. She shared them at a recent meeting of the Ringwood Garden Club, who were already familiar with the rationale of why people should put out winter birdfeeders. Among the reasons she gave were that the more common birds such as the American crows, starlings, house sparrows and cowbirds crowd the smaller song birds out of the feeders. Starlings and house sparrows were introduced here many years ago and took over nesting places of the native song birds. Common birds crowd the feeders and push out the native song birds. They get fat and healthy as they go into spring. The song birds cannot always find great quantities of food in the winter and find the competition from the more common birds difficult to contend with in springtime. Judy said cowbirds lay eggs in the nests of the yellow warbler. Blue jays, year round birds, will eat the eggs that robins lay in their nests in the spring. Purple grackles arrive in February and take over the feeders. Some hawks are designed to eat native song birds, but the red tail hawk attacks and eats mice, rats and squirrels. Squirrels are also difficult to control. They are very crafty and there are few feeders that they cannot get into. Some of the birds you might like to attract to special song bird feeders are downy and hairy woodpeckers, yellow tail sapsuckers, red headed woodpeckers, grosbeaks, red polls, purple finch, cardinals, warblers and mockingbirds. She advised that we should not put feeders in the middle of a lawn. Keep them near bushes and shrubs so that smaller birds can eat without being attacked by hawks. A good idea is to place small feeders intermittently in these areas. Birds love to roost in dense pine and cedar trees in winter Some of the berries and seeds that song birds love to eat are poison ivy berries, pokeberries, ragweed, sumac, cedar, white pine cone nuts, rose hips, foxtail grass, and viburnum. Barberries are a last resort food. Cinqina conducts an annual breeding bird survey at New Jersey Botanical Gardens each spring, and writes freelance articles on birds that have appeared in The New York Times and New Jersey Audubon magazine among others.