Attracting Birds to a New Feeder

The short answer

• A new feeder in a yard with existing feeder traffic nearby is usually found in 2 to 7 days. An isolated feeder in a yard with no cover can take 4 to 8 weeks.
• Birds find feeders by sight, not smell. Everything you do to speed discovery is about making the food visible from a perch a bird already uses.
• For the first week, scatter a handful of seed on the ground and on the feeder roof and tray. Loose seed on an open surface is found far faster than seed sealed inside a tube.
• Cover within 10 to 15 ft is the strongest single predictor of how quickly a feeder gets used, and the most common thing missing from feeders that stay empty.
• If nothing has come in three weeks, change one variable at a time, in this order: position, then visibility, then food, then feeder type.

A feeder hung this morning is a new object in a landscape the local birds already know in detail. They are not waiting for it, they are not going to smell it, and nothing about it looks like food from 50 ft up. Discovery is a visual accident that you can make much more likely.

The honest answer to "how long" is 3 to 14 days in a typical yard, 2 to 4 days in a good one, and 4 to 8 weeks in a bad one. What separates those cases is not the feeder.

What decides where you land in that range#

Add up your column. Four or more in the right-hand column and you should plan for a month, not a week, and you should fix the position before you change anything else. The mechanics of that are in where to put a bird feeder.

Scouts, then flocks: how discovery actually runs#

Feeders are not found by a population, they are found by an individual, and then the information spreads. The sequence is consistent enough to plan around.

1. A scout finds it. Almost always a resident, curious, food-caching species with a large home range that it inspects constantly. In the east and north that is usually a Black-capped Chickadee or a Tufted Titmouse; in much of the continent it can be a House Finch.
2. It comes back. One visit means nothing. A bird that finds food revisits the spot within a day or two to check it is still there, and that second visit is the one that matters.
3. Its flock follows. Chickadees and titmice move in loose winter flocks with attendant nuthatches and woodpeckers. Once one bird is feeding daily, the others in the flock learn the location within days. This is why traffic often goes from zero to five species in under a week after two weeks of nothing.
4. Watchers join. Other species watch feeding birds and follow them. Cardinals, juncos and House Finches frequently arrive after the chickadees, not before, because they took the chickadees as the signal.

Priming: the first seven days#

Do all of these at once at the start. They are cheap, and each one attacks a different part of the discovery problem.

• Scatter seed low and wide. A handful of black oil sunflower and white proso millet on the ground under the feeder, every day for the first week to ten days. Loose seed on open ground is visible from far above and pulls in the ground guild, which is the noisiest advertisement you can buy. Stop at ten days to avoid feeding rodents. See ground feeding for how to do this without making a mess.
• Put seed where it can be seen. A few seeds on the feeder roof, and a full tray rather than a half-empty tube. A tube seen from above is a stick.
• Fill with one good seed. Black oil sunflower, nothing else in the feeder itself. Details in black oil sunflower seed.
• Get cover within 10 to 15 ft. Not touching the feeder (that hands it to squirrels and gives cats an ambush point) but within one short flight. If you have nothing, stand a cut Christmas tree, a brush pile or a large potted shrub near the pole for the first month.
• Add water. A shallow dish, 2 in deep at most, ideally with a drip. Water is found faster than seed in dry and in freezing weather. See bird baths and water.
• Leave it alone. No moving, no rearranging, no standing under it. Watch from indoors through a window.
• Start in the right month if you can. Late fall is the easiest time to establish a feeder: natural seed supply is falling, flocks are forming, and birds are actively prospecting. Fall bird feeding covers the timing.

The order species usually arrive#

The sequence below is a working timetable for eastern and midwestern yards rather than a measured one. Yours will differ in detail, but the shape holds: small, bold, resident, flocking birds first, heavy and shy birds last.

Cardinals arriving in week four is not a failure of weeks one to three. They are consistently one of the last regulars to commit to a new site, and they need a standing surface when they do: a hopper or a tray, not a bare tube perch. The full picture is on the Northern Cardinal page.

Here is who takes the seed you started with, ranked by how strongly each species prefers it:

• Top-tier favorite for: Northern Cardinal, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Red-breasted Nuthatch, House Finch, Purple Finch, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Evening Grosbeak
• Eaten readily by: Blue Jay, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, American Goldfinch, Lesser Goldfinch, Pine Siskin, Mourning Dove, Dark-eyed Junco, White-throated Sparrow, Eastern Towhee, Steller's Jay, California Scrub-Jay, House Sparrow, Common Grackle, Red-winged Blackbird
• Taken occasionally by: Northern Flicker, Song Sparrow, Carolina Wren, European Starling

Three weeks, nothing: the diagnosis#

Change one variable, wait ten days, then judge. Changing three at once tells you nothing. Work down this order, because it runs from most to least likely.

1. Position. Move the feeder to within 10 to 15 ft of a shrub, hedge or tree, and where it is visible from open sky. Do not move it again for three weeks.
2. Visibility. Clear a branch or two if the feeder sits inside dense foliage. Add a bare perch (a stake, a dead branch lashed to the pole) 3 to 6 ft away and slightly higher: birds land there first and inspect the feeder from it.
3. Predator pressure. A cat that crosses the yard daily will suppress everything, and birds will use a yard they consider unsafe only when desperate. See cats and feeders. A resident hawk has a similar effect for days at a time, covered in hawks at feeders.
4. The seed. Old seed smells musty and clumps. Cheap mix is mostly filler. Empty it, replace with fresh sunflower, and check the label if there is anything unusual in the mix.
5. The feeder. Last, not first. A tube with 2 in perches genuinely excludes most large birds, and a feeder that cannot shed rain will hold wet seed nobody wants.

Once it works#

Traffic at an established feeder builds over months, not days, and it peaks in the coldest weeks of winter. Two habits protect what you have built. Keep the feeder stocked on a predictable schedule, because birds sample many sites and drop the unreliable ones. And clean it on a fixed interval rather than when it looks dirty, since a busy feeder is also a disease transmission point: the routine is in how to clean a bird feeder.

When the regulars are settled, add the next guild rather than the next feeder. Suet reaches woodpeckers and wrens, a low tray reaches the ground birds, and nyjer reaches goldfinches. The map of who wants what is in the backyard feeder birds hub.

Frequently asked questions#

How long does it take for birds to find a new bird feeder?

Usually 3 to 14 days. If neighbors already feed and there are trees or shrubs within about 15 ft, expect the first visits inside a week, sometimes within 48 hours. If the feeder is in open lawn with no perch in sight and no other feeders nearby, a month is normal and two months happens. The clock does not start until a bird has a reason to look down at that exact spot, which is why visibility and nearby cover matter more than the food you chose.

Should I scatter seed on the ground when I start a feeder?

Yes, for the first week to ten days. Put a handful of black oil sunflower and millet on the ground under the feeder and a few seeds on the feeder tray and roof. Loose seed on an open surface is far more visible from above than seed inside a tube, and ground-feeding species like juncos, doves and sparrows will find it first and act as a signal to everything else. Stop after ten days so you do not build a rodent problem.

Why is my new feeder still empty after three weeks?

Work through it in order. Is there a perch or shrub within 15 ft? Is the feeder visible from above, not tucked under an eave or dense canopy? Is the seed fresh, and is it sunflower rather than a filler mix? Is there a cat that patrols the yard? Have you moved the feeder repeatedly, resetting the clock each time? The two causes that account for most stubbornly empty feeders are no cover within sight and a feeder placed where it cannot be seen from the trees the birds already use.

What is the best food to start a new feeder with?

Black oil sunflower. It has the broadest appeal of any single seed and it works for the species most likely to find you first: chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, House Finches and cardinals. Add a small amount of white proso millet at ground level for doves, juncos and native sparrows. Skip cheap mixes with milo, wheat and oats at this stage: they get raked out, they attract the wrong birds, and the rejected grain rots.

Does a bird bath help attract birds to a feeder?

It often works faster than the feeder does, especially in dry weather and in freezing weather when open water is scarce. Moving water is more effective than still water because birds detect the movement and sound from a distance. A shallow dish, no more than 2 in deep, with a dripper or a slow drip from a hung bottle, will pull in species that have no interest in seed at all, including warblers and thrushes in migration.

Will moving the feeder make birds come faster?

Not if you keep doing it. Each move restarts discovery for the birds that had begun to learn the location. Give any position a full three weeks before judging it. If you do move, move it toward cover rather than away, keep it visible from above, and shift it no more than 10 to 15 ft at a time so birds that already know the old spot can find the new one.

Sources and further reading

1. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Food and feeder pairings, and expectations for new feeding stations
2. Bird Feeding and Care National Audubon Society Cover, water and habitat as drivers of yard use
3. All About Birds species guide Cornell Lab of Ornithology Foraging behavior and flocking of the species named here
4. Birds Canada Birds Canada Northern feeding season timing