Backyard Feeder Birds

The short answer

• Four filters decide your species list, in this order: range, habitat, season, food. Changing seed cannot beat a range or habitat problem.
• Almost every feeder bird in North America belongs to one of five guilds: perching seed-eaters, clingers, ground feeders, nectar birds and fruit or insect eaters.
• One feeder plus black oil sunflower reaches roughly two of the five guilds. Adding suet, a low tray and nyjer reaches four of them for the price of a bag of seed each.
• A realistic first-year list for a suburban yard is 8 to 15 species, and the biggest single lever on that number is cover within 10 to 15 ft of the feeder, not the feeder itself.

The question behind almost every search about backyard birds is really "which birds can I get?" That is answerable, and it is answerable before you spend anything, because your species list is filtered four times in a fixed order.

1. Range. Is the bird's population anywhere near you? No amount of seed fixes this. A Northern Cardinal will not appear in Seattle, and a Steller's Jay will not appear in Ohio.
2. Habitat. Within the range, does your specific block hold it? Cardinals need dense shrubs. Nuthatches need mature trees. Bluebirds need open ground with perches. A treeless new-build estate and a wooded lot two miles away have different lists in the same county.
3. Season. Many of the best feeder birds are only present part of the year: juncos and White-throated Sparrows in winter, orioles and hummingbirds in summer, siskins and Evening Grosbeaks only in irruption years.
4. Food and feeder. This is the only filter you fully control, and it is the last one.

Most disappointing feeders are a habitat or range problem being treated as a seed problem. Work down the list in order, and if the first three check out, the fourth is easy. For the first two filters applied to where you actually live, region by region, see feeder birds by region.

Five guilds, not thirty-four species#

You do not need to plan for individual species. Feeder birds sort into five feeding guilds, and each guild wants a different combination of food, surface and height. Cover all five and your yard is as good as it can be. Cover two and you have the standard suburban feeder: chickadees, house finches, and a note on a forum asking where everything else is.

Perching seed-eaters#

Cardinals, finches, grosbeaks, chickadees and titmice. They land, take a seed, and either eat it in place or carry it off. This guild is the one every feeder is designed for, and the split inside it is body weight. Anything under about 25 g (chickadees, goldfinches, siskins, House Finches) can use a short perch on a tube feeder. Anything over about 40 g (cardinals, Rose-breasted and Evening Grosbeaks) needs a standing surface: a hopper, a tray, or a tray clipped under a tube.

Food: black oil sunflower, sunflower hearts, safflower. Nyjer for the finch end of the guild.

Clingers#

Woodpeckers, nuthatches, creepers, chickadees again. They approach a feeder the way they approach a trunk: vertically, gripping, with no interest in a perch. They pay for the calories with patience, which is why fat works so well on them.

Food: suet, shelled peanuts, sunflower. Feeder: a suet cage or a wire peanut feeder. Both cost less than most seed feeders and both open a guild that a seed tube cannot touch.

Ground feeders#

Doves, juncos, native sparrows, towhees, thrashers. They feed on horizontal surfaces at or near the ground and mostly ignore hanging feeders entirely. This is the guild people accidentally feed by spilling seed, then remove by installing a no-mess feeder.

Food: white proso millet above all, plus cracked corn and whatever falls from above. Surface: a low tray or a swept patch of ground, kept moving around the yard so droppings and hulls do not build up in one spot.

Nectar birds#

Hummingbirds, and in the east orioles as well. Entirely separate equipment, entirely separate season in most of the continent. A 4:1 sugar-to-water solution with no dye, changed before it clouds, in a feeder you can actually open and scrub.

Fruit and insect eaters#

Bluebirds, robins, waxwings, orioles, Carolina Wrens. They are not interested in seed at any price. Mealworms, halved oranges, grape jelly in small quantities and suet get you into this guild, and it is the one that most often surprises people who assumed their yard was "done".

The birds that arrive whether you invited them or not#

Three species turn up at most North American feeders and are usually the reason someone starts searching for solutions rather than species lists. They are worth planning for from day one because the fix is easier before they settle in than after.

None of these are a reason to stop feeding. Each is a reason to be deliberate about which food sits on an open surface, because every one of them is an open-surface specialist.

When each group shows up#

Seasonality is the filter people forget, and it produces most of the "my birds have vanished" worry. A rough calendar for the middle of the continent:

• Year-round core: cardinals, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, House Finches, doves. These are the birds your feeder holds in every month.
• Winter arrivals (roughly October to April): juncos, White-throated Sparrows, and in irruption years Pine Siskins, Purple Finches, Red-breasted Nuthatches and Evening Grosbeaks. Winter is the highest-traffic feeding season and the one covered in winter bird feeding.
• Summer arrivals (roughly May to August): hummingbirds and orioles, plus Rose-breasted Grosbeaks in the east on passage. Feeder traffic drops in June and July because insects are abundant and adults are feeding young on them rather than on your seed. That drop is normal and is not a sign that anything has gone wrong.
• Two weeks of chaos each spring and fall: migration windows, when species that will never return use your yard for a day. This is when a bird bath earns its place, because migrants stop for water more reliably than for seed.

Reading the preference data#

Every species on this site is scored 0 to 4 against 13 foods, condensed from published species accounts, feeding research and Project FeederWatch guidance. The full grid lives in the bird food preference chart, and the method behind the scoring is written up alongside it. Two things fall out of it immediately.

First, black oil sunflower is the widest single food, but it is not universal: it scores 0 or 1 for doves at the ground end and for nectar birds entirely. Second, the foods that look specialized often are not. Shelled peanuts score as a top-tier food for chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, woodpeckers, jays and scrub-jays, which is a broader cross-guild reach than any seed except sunflower.

What a realistic yard looks like#

A worked example, using the four filters. Suburban lot in Ohio, one mature maple, a hedge along the back fence, feeder 12 ft from the hedge.

• Range puts Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Mourning Dove and House Finch on the table, and takes Steller's Jay, Lesser Goldfinch and Anna's Hummingbird off it.
• Habitat keeps all of the above (the hedge covers the shrub species, the maple covers the bark species) but removes Eastern Bluebird unless there is open mown ground in view.
• Season adds Dark-eyed Junco and White-throated Sparrow from roughly October to April, adds Ruby-throated Hummingbird and Baltimore Oriole from May to August, and holds back Pine Siskin for irruption years only.
• Food then decides how many of those actually land. Sunflower in a hopper gets perhaps six of them. Add suet and you get the woodpeckers and the wren. Add millet on a low tray and you get the doves, juncos and sparrows. Add nectar in May and you get the hummingbird.

That is 12 to 15 species from one yard, three foods and about $40 of equipment, and the step that mattered most was the hedge that was already there. If your yard has no cover, read native plants and cover before you read anything else here.

Where to start#

If you have no feeder yet, go to starting a feeding station. If the feeder is up and empty of birds, the sequence in attracting birds to a new feeder covers the first three weeks, and no birds at my feeder covers what to do when those three weeks pass with nothing. If you know the bird you want and need the specifics, every species page below gives its food ranking, the feeders it will use, and the reason it might be skipping your yard.

Frequently asked questions#

How many bird species should I expect at a new feeder?

In a suburban yard with trees or shrubs nearby, 8 to 15 species over the first year is a normal result, with 4 to 6 of them present on any given day. Rural yards next to woodland or hedgerow often reach 20 or more. A balcony with no cover within sight may top out at 3 or 4. The number climbs fastest when you add a second food type that reaches a new guild, not when you add a second feeder of the same kind.

Which single seed brings in the most species?

Black oil sunflower. It has the broadest appeal of any single seed, and in our species scoring it is a top-tier food for cardinals, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, house finches, purple finches and grosbeaks, and taken readily by many others. It does not reach doves and native sparrows (millet does), goldfinches in a dedicated finch feeder (nyjer or hearts), woodpeckers in cold weather (suet) or hummingbirds (nectar).

Why do I only get little brown birds?

Usually the feeder, not the yard. A tube feeder with short perches is a small-bird machine: chickadees, finches and siskins can use it and cardinals, jays, grosbeaks and doves cannot. Add a tray at the base of the tube or scatter seed on a low platform and the heavy perching birds appear within days, because they were already in the neighborhood eating what the small birds knocked down.

Do I need different feeders for different birds?

You need different foods. The feeder follows from the food. Sunflower goes in a tube or hopper, suet needs a cage, nyjer needs fine ports, nectar needs a sealed reservoir, and millet needs a surface at or near ground level. If you buy feeders first you tend to end up with three of the same guild covered three times over.

Will feeding birds make them dependent on my feeder?

No. Studies of wild birds using feeders consistently find that feeders are a supplement rather than a replacement for natural food, and birds continue to forage widely. The practical consequence is that you can go on holiday without arranging a feeder sitter. It also means a feeder alone will not hold a species that has no habitat here.

Sources and further reading

1. All About Birds species guide Cornell Lab of Ornithology Range, habitat and identification for every species listed here
2. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Which foods and feeder types attract which species groups
3. Bird Feeding and Care National Audubon Society Habitat, cover and water as drivers of yard bird diversity
4. Birds Canada Birds Canada Canadian range and winter feeder bird guidance