Feedback gleaned from alt.permaculture:
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What about hawthorn, elder, crab apple? these would all stay fairly small,
the first 2 can be coppiced. They also come in 'garden'/ornamental types,
but you'd have to check they still produce berries/fruit etc..

Could I recommend a non native, amelanchier canadensis; makes a 
small tree or big bush, deciduous, white spring flowers, red leaves 
and black fruit in autumn, very tough.Can be bought for about 60p UK 
dosh, from hedging suppliers.Hawthorn, grown as a tree, very quick 
from a hedge whip to a mature, even ancient looking tree, easily kept 
to the size you want, excellent bird and insect 
attractant.Whitebeam.Bird cherry.Wild cherry. Hazel. Acer rubrum is 
less of a giant and colours better than sycamore.Birch are best dug 
as 2 to 3 ft seedlings somewhere close by,kept damp and planted 
quickly, ones sent by post often die and potted ones are very slow in 
comparison.

 An understory of smaller stuff like elder, cornus, guelder,dogrose 
gives ground feeding birds some shelter.

  Hedging suppliers are almost always the cheapest places to buy bare 
root trees from (and convenient, by post) and their small 2 to 3 ft 
plants grow away so fast they rapidly overtake older larger stock.

> Do you know Sorbus aucuparia 'Moravica' syn. Sorbus aucuparia var. edulis? In
> plain English this is an edible rowan with large sweet berries, no bitterness,
> no need to soak in vinegar. Makes beautiful jam 50/50 with apples, and sauce to
> go with goat kid, venison and the like.
> Took me years to find a source here in Ireland. Planted 10 of them this spring.
> Highly recommended!

  Well,I have s. a. edulis, but being very simple and greedy I 
expected from the name to be able to eat its berries off the tree 
like cherries, and when I found they were as horrible as any other 
raw rowan berry I didnt bother again.

  But what is all this about vinegar? We have made excellent rowan, 
and rowan and apple, jelly from ordinary rowan berries with no 
trouble, in fact I'm half way through a jar I found at the back of a 
cupboard and it's delicious...

Do you know Sorbus aucuparia 'Moravica' syn. Sorbus aucuparia var. edulis? In
plain English this is an edible rowan with large sweet berries, no bitterness,
no need to soak in vinegar. Makes beautiful jam 50/50 with apples, and sauce to
go with goat kid, venison and the like.
Took me years to find a source here in Ireland. Planted 10 of them this spring.
Highly recommended!

The Mountain Ash/Rowan is a lovely tree. The birds have really stripped the
berries from our big Rowan this year, but normally it is so beautiful with
all those clumps of bright red berries.

  From "The tree Book"by J Edward Milner ISBN  1-85585-132-6 which 
describes the trees of Britain and Ireland including a lot of their 
history, tree lore and tree craft says of rowan

 " As with every other species of sorbus, the wood is tough and 
strong and trasditionally used for handles of tools, cartwheels,and 
planks and beams (if large enough)."

  extracts from the lore-- tied as a collar to the neck of a hound 
will increase his speed.Keeps the dead from rising.A sovereign 
protector of milk.

  In Norway, rowan bark shavings were fed to cattle in winter (dates 
back to iron age).
  In Wales, people wear Easter crosses made of rowan wood.

  I'm completely addicted to rowans and have a large collection of 
different sorts, with white, pink, red, orange, gold, yellow berries 
and lots of foliage forms.