I've had a small platform feeder and a heated water source for the past several years. This year I added a larger platform feeder, a thistle seed feeder, and a suet feeder this year. The larger platform feeder has a bird seed mix with cracked corn and other things. I decided this seed wasn't a good purchase, although I'm getting blue jays for the first time. Nothing else really likes 90% of the feed. Next time I would get corn for the jays and safflower for everything else. I only put safflower seed in the small platform feeder in the back yard, and it is popular with many different over-wintering birds.
Safflower seed
I like using safflower because so many birds like it, squirrels don't really like it and mostly leave it alone, and it doesn't seem to hurt whatever is growing beneath the feeder. Birds love black sunflower seeds too, but the shells that accumulate under the feeder emit some sort of toxin that kills off any plants growing beneath the feeder, so that isn't idea. And the squirrels love those seeds too, so you have to be prepared to feed both.
Water
I think it is very important to offer water for birds. Right now they need it because it has been so dry -- we haven't had much snow or rain for weeks. When it's really cold out, they need water in liquid form because "drinking snow" burns a lot of calories that they can't spare to use. Ingesting ice lowers body temps and that isn't really hurts animals that are doing everything they can to live through below-zero nights. I just have a bird bath heater plugged in at the backyard outlet and a brick in a deep bowl of water on a pedestal so they have somewhere to land. Before it got below 50 degrees during the day I had birds still using taking baths as well as drinking. A lot of migrating robins were especially fond of immersing themselves.
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