Birds in the garden... just to clarify

A few blog entries ago I wrote that despite there being low temperatures and lots of snow, very few birds were visting our garden (backyard to my US friends)... well, I put out more seed, some on the table, some on the ground, and also some coconut and fat, and a few more have arrived. But not in the numbers I expected. Today a friend who lives nearby called me and said he read my blog and that he, too, had very few birds in his garden (yard). He lives about a mile away, if that. He was concerned. But I have to say, I do not go in for the doom and gloom approach, that some put forward when things do not go as expected on the bird front. The birds are not fewer in number overall here, no, not at all, I think they are just elsewhere. As he said, after our conversation, maybe they just went where "the cooking is better"...