We've been in our house for a couple years now and have been focused on fixing up the backyard this spring/summer. We had a large tree along the back fence that was dead and we recently had it topped off. As you can see in the pictures, it is still about 15ft tall. The area around it is mostly clover, but we are slowly planning to make it into a wild garden, with native plants, wildflowers, etc. We would love to make the tree into something for the birds and possibly squirrels, but we had a horrible experience with nesting finches and bullying sparrows on our front porch, so we don't want to create any environment that causes fighting.  

We live in the midwest, and have a lot of birds in our neighborhood. We have had a few basic feeders and a bird bath and they seem pretty popular. We see robins, grackles, blue jays, sparrows, house finches, golden finches, cardinals, woodpeckers, cat birds, hummingbirds, and more. We want to keep the feeders closer to our house and were thinking that we would create some nesting boxes, perches, or bird houses to hang around the topped tree, and maybe a bird bath close by. If it wasn't dangerous for the birds, we would also like to hang a few squirrel feeders or boxes lower on the tree. We know we need to keep the feeders away from any nesting areas, but are there any other safety issues we aren't considering? We don't want to do any harm, and if it's better to leave the tree alone and just focus on the wild garden, that's what we'll do! 

Also, any ideas for other things we could do to enhance the garden for our local wild birds would be very welcome. We love having them around and want to make our backyard a sanctuary for them!

Ideas or tips for creating a nice and safe bird habitat in our wild garden?