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House sparrows and starlings were the first, and they descended by the dozens.

After a few days, I heard the squawk of a blue jay one morning. On a deer stand, I can be driven to distraction by a single jay. But in my backyard, a jay was a splash of color on a winter day. It flitted around the cherry tree. Another soon joined it.

The rush was on.

A bright red male cardinal and its brown mate started regular morning shows. Mourning doves began picking dropped grain off the ground. A handful of dark-eyed juncos showed up after a January snowstorm. A couple of unidentified sparrows flashed through one morning. Above the suet holder, a downy woodpecker did its herky- jerky walk up and down the maple. (A downy working a tree always reminds me of Michael Jackson doing his moonwalk.)

I rearranged my office so the desk was next to a window. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the bird feeder. A pair of pocket binoculars stays on the computer tower and a copy of Birds of Chicago: Including NE Illinois and NW Indiana, by Chris C. Fisher and David B. Johnson, sits within arm's reach.

The feeder was a wedding gift, but while we lived in a three-flat on the Northwest Side, all it did was clutter up our basement storage bin. It is a colossus, made of white pine two feet by three feet with a high-pitched roof.

When we moved to a place with a small yard, I immediately dug a hole in a flower bed near the maple. I planted a four-foot 4-by-4, then hammered the feeder into it. It stood empty until the snow started.

I hung a feeder filled with sugar water on the porch. Ruby- throated hummingbirds would hover above it. If we turned our heads too quickly, they seemed to dematerialize into the air. I hung a thistle feeder, too. American goldfinches found it within a week.

Then the fall migration began, and I put the porch feeders away. For a few months, birding was limited to the honk of Canada geese in the morning or the caw of passing crows.

With the snow, I filled the wooden feeder and put suet in a wire basket tied to the maple.

They came.

This being the real natural world and not a Walt Disney production, predators were close behind. Cats began stalking the feeder. We took off the back panel so the birds had an escape route, and the cats soon gave up.

One morning, so many birds were hanging around they created a background hum of calls that wafted through the closed windows while I worked. Suddenly there was complete silence.

I looked out, and not a single bird was around. No sparrows fluttered in and out of the mulberry bush. The jays weren't sitting in the cherry tree. Even the rows of starlings had abandoned the maple.

A raptor was around. I caught the shadow of it passing to the north. It looked like a red-tailed hawk.

Everyone is invited to chronicle the birds that make up the natural background in the Great Backyard Bird Count 2000 from Friday through Monday.

The project by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology is based on the Internet it will be a family activity.

It is not restricted by any means to the suburban or rural areas. In Chicago, there are wonders such as the great horned owl that has been hanging around Humboldt Park for several weeks, the parakeets of Jackson Park and the peregrine falcons downtown.

SHOW TIME: Ed Viesturs, 40, who went from the flatlands of Rockford to climb Mt. Everest five times, headlines Outside's International Adventure Travel and Outdoor Show at the Rosemont Convention Center. He will give a slide presentation at 4 p.m. Saturday.

# posted by Medical Information : 2:52 AM