How to Feed Your Backyard Birds

There are many kinds of bird feeders and many types of bird seed and other food to fill the feeders. The best choice of bird feeders for you will depend partly on what birds you want to attract to your backyard or garden area. You may decide that you want to attract many species of birds, and choose to put up many different feeders filled with a variety of bird food.

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Also consider the following in your choice of bird feeders:

• Where do you want to place the feeder?
• Do you have easy access to it?
• Is the feeder easy to clean?
• How much bird seed will it hold?
• Does it keep the bird seed dry? If not, will you replace the bird seed frequently?

It's important to keep your bird feeders clean so that the bird seed and other food doesn't become contaminated with molds and bacteria that can make the birds sick.

Tits and Other Garden Birds on Feeder, Winter
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Here are some common types of bird feeders

• Tray feeders
• House or hopper feeders
• Tube feeders
• Thistle or nyjer feeders
• Suet feeders
• Window feeders
• Hummingbird feeder
• Seed cakes, seed bells

Tray or platform feeders
Tray feeders are simple to maintain, often inexpensive, and attract a large variety of birds including ground-feeding birds that usually don't visit other kinds of feeders. Look for tray feeders with screened bottoms for better drainage. Since this kind of feeder doesn't protect the bird food from rain or snow, only put out enough for a couple days at a time, and clean off the old seed before you add the new.

House or hopper feeders
House feeders usually keep the bird seed protected from the elements. They can be put up on a pole or suspended. This type of bird feeder attracts finches, cardinals, jays, sparrows, chickadees, and titmice, along with other feeder birds. House feeders hold a few days worth of food, which is fine as long as it doesn't get wet. They're more difficult to clean than tray feeders.


Photo of hopper feeder with suet feeder on sides from Birdfreak.com

Tube feeders
Tube feeders keep bird seed fairly clean and dry. Tube feeders with smaller perches will attract smaller birds, such as finches, chickadees, and sparrows, keeping away larger birds such as grackles and jays. Larger tube feeders will of course hold more seed, but if there aren't many birds around during certain times, it's best to use smaller feeders, so that the seed doesn't get old and contaminated.

Thistle or nyjer feeders
Thistle feeders are more correctly called nyjer feeders, since nyjer seed, and not thistle seed, is used to fill these feeders. Nyjer feeders attract gold finches, house and purple finches, pine siskins, and redpolls.

Suet feeders
Suet feeders are usually metal or plastic mesh cages that hold suet cakes. Suet is a mixture of animal fat and other ingredients that attract insect-eating birds such as woodpeckers, chickadees, blue jays, and cardinals. Suet is a quick source of energy for birds, and is a good substitute for insects when the weather is too cold for many insects. Suet can be put out all year.


Downy woodpecker at suet feeder, Creative Commons photo by Dendroica cerulea

Window feeders
Window bird feeders can attach to windows with suction cups or hook into window frames. These bird feeders attract smaller birds such as finches, chickadees, sparrows, and titmice. Seed should be changed daily since birds often stand in these feeders.

Hummingbird feeders
Hummingbird feeders hold a sugar water liquid made from 4 parts water and 1 part sugar. These should be cleaned out every three days or so.

Seed cakes / seed bells
Hanging seed bells is an easy way to feed birds! You can buy different mixtures to attract different birds, although do buy a good quality bird seed mix! Many bird seed mixtures in seed cakes or seed bells have too many kinds of seeds that birds don't prefer.

The cheaper mixed bird seed bags are filled with too many kinds of seeds that don't appeal to most birds who come to tube or hopper bird feeders. The birds will kick out the seeds that they don't want and eat just the sunflower seeds, making a mess underneath. It's a better idea to buy unmixed seeds and place different kinds in different feeders to attract a variety of birds to your backyard.

The favorite food of many birds is the black oil sunflower seed. Black oil sunflower seeds have a thinner shell than striped sunflower seeds, so are easier to shell by more birds. If you prefer to discourage house sparrows and black birds, put out the thicker shelled striped sunflower seeds.

White millet is enjoyed by many ground-feeding birds, such as sparrows, juncos, doves, cardinals, cowbirds, and blackbirds.

Birds that like rapeseed include juncos, doves, and finches. Most other birds will ignore this, so if you're not getting birds that like rapeseed, don't buy mixtures that include it.

SEEDS TO AVOID include golden and red millet and flax. Most birds will not eat these, and when left for long the seeds easily become contaminated, causing unhealthy conditions in the bird feeders. Also it's good to avoid canary seed, since it draws the already overly-prevalent house sparrows and cowbirds.

Some of the birds that like peanuts are jays, crows, woodpeckers, titmice and chickadees.

Put out corn to attract doves, jays, juncos, starlings, and white-throated sparrows.

For a list of different combinations of bird feeders and bird seed to attract different species of birds, read Choosing Seeds for Native Species in Backyard Bird Feeding

House sparrow at tube feeder, Creative Commons photo by Kables

Squirrels love much of the same bird seed and other foods that backyard birds do, and they're very resourceful when trying to get to the food. They jump or climb easily to many feeders, and they can gnaw through some of the plastic tube feeders. Cylindrical or conical squirrel baffles can keep squirrels from climbing up poles to bird feeders, or dropping down to them, depending on how the baffle is placed.

My husband's grandmother used to put Vaseline on the pole to their bird feeder and laugh as the squirrels would climb part way up.....then s-l-i-d-e down the pole. Good entertainment value!

Another option is to buy a squirrel-proof bird feeder.

Flickr Photo/Creative Commons license by Noel Zia Lee

By providing feeding stations for a variety of birds, you'll be able to learn more about them since they'll stay longer in your yard. That will give you more time to learn to visually identify the birds in your area, and to learn their bird songs and calls.

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