ant-- Thanks for the reply. I believe you are correct about attracting birds with trees, although geese and ducks need a landing zone in the BOW. The blue heron seems to need a decent sized landing zone, so I suspect it has reduced the frequency of its visits. Now that I'm retired, I should be able to observe the bird activities more closely. As for feeding, over the years I've limited that to tossing broken up bread pieces into the BGs. I do this nearly daily during the summer. There are probably better food pellets for the BGs I'm guessing?? The frogs, tadpoles, and bluegills seem to provide the LMB prey. And the occasional dragonfly that hovers too low! Good to know about winter kills by aerating. I'll need to search the message board here to better understand the risks of winter aeration. With heavy ice cover here in NE Ohio and deep snowcover, keeping at least one area of the pond surface ice-free would seem appropriate. The last polar vortex killed all of our LMB, nearly all the bluegill and the single amur we had. It was a messy and disappointing outcome of the heavy ice cover. I hope to avoid that in the future. BTW, the pond is only about 75' from the house. Needless to say, I make frequent visits to the pond in spring, summer and fall. So an auto feeder doesn't seem needed. A change in BG food- probably.
