Feeder Birds by Region: What You Can Actually Get Where You Live

The short answer

• Range, habitat and season are three separate filters. Most "why don't I get that bird" questions are a range question, and no change of seed can fix a range problem.
• Thirteen of the 34 species in our dataset are continent-wide, so most of any regional list is the same birds. The regional part is the other twenty-one.
• The biggest regional splits are hummingbirds (Ruby-throated is east of the Rockies, Anna's is the Pacific coast and Southwest), jays, and the eastern woodland set of cardinal, titmouse, Carolina Wren and Red-bellied Woodpecker.
• What changes regionally is emphasis, not principle: suet timing in the South, nectar year-round on the Pacific coast, feeders down for bears in the mountains and the boreal, ground trays and wind shelter on the Plains.
• Black oil sunflower is the default first seed in every region on this list. Nothing about geography changes that.

A feeder in Vermont and a feeder in Tucson can hold the same seed and produce lists with almost nothing in common. The seed is not the variable. Geography is.

Range, habitat and season are three different filters#

Nearly every "why don't I get X" question is one of three problems.

Range is a hard boundary. Our dataset lists Northern Cardinal for the East, Midwest, South and Southwest, which is why Oregon and Montana yards never get one, whatever is in the feeder.

Habitat is whether your yard suits a bird that is in range. Eastern Towhee is listed for the East and South, but wants dense brush and leaf litter: a mown lot mid-range gets none while the house with a brush pile gets them daily.

Season is whether the bird is here this month. Dark-eyed Junco is listed continent-wide in winter, which in most of the United States means absent from May to September. The feeder that "stopped working in spring" did nothing wrong.

Thirteen of the 34 species are listed continent-wide and form the shared floor under every region below: White-breasted Nuthatch (not the far north), Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers, Northern Flicker, American Goldfinch, House Finch, Mourning Dove, winter Dark-eyed Junco, Song Sparrow, American Robin, House Sparrow, European Starling, Red-winged Blackbird. Assume those, then read each region for what it adds and takes away.

Northeast and Atlantic Canada#

Adds: Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Purple Finch, Carolina Wren, White-throated Sparrow in winter, and in summer Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Baltimore Oriole and Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Evening Grosbeak and Pine Siskin appear in irruption winters.

Will not come: any western bird. Steller's Jay is listed for the West and mountain forests, California Scrub-Jay only for the Pacific slope, Lesser Goldfinch and Anna's Hummingbird likewise. In Atlantic Canada, titmouse, Red-bellied Woodpecker and Carolina Wren sit at or beyond their northern edge, so check a provincial map.

Food and feeders: suet runs roughly October to April here and is what separates a four-species yard from a ten-species one. Keep a low tray for juncos and White-throated Sparrows, which will not use a hanging tube.

Timing: Ruby-throats arrive early to mid-May in New England, later inland and north, and are mostly gone by late September. Orioles land in the first half of May. Juncos come with the first hard cold, usually October.

The local problem: snow load and ice. Flat lids collect a snow cap that freezes the ports shut, and seed that thaws and refreezes cements into the base. Use sloped roofs, fill less more often, and clear the tray after every storm.

Southeast and Gulf Coast#

Adds: Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Towhee, Ruby-throated Hummingbird and Common Grackle, plus White-throated Sparrow in winter.

Will not come: Black-capped Chickadee, listed for the North, Midwest, Northeast and Northwest. The bird on your sunflower is a Carolina Chickadee, not in the 34 and identical in behavior. Evening Grosbeak is North and West only. Baltimore Oriole and Rose-breasted Grosbeak are East and Midwest summer birds, so on the Gulf treat them as migrants.

Food and feeders: suet is the seasonal casualty. Plain suet melts and goes rancid above about 70 °F, which here means most of the year, so run it roughly November to March. Safflower earns its keep because grackle pressure is year-round, and fruit and jelly pay off.

Timing: Ruby-throats arrive very early, often March along the Gulf, and coastal yards hold hummingbirds later into fall than the rest of the East. Winter sparrows run October to March.

The local problem: heat plus humidity, which is a mold problem. Seed in a hopper pulls moisture from the air and cakes in days rather than weeks. Fill half full, dry the feeder completely at every clean, change nectar every one to two days in high summer. See moldy seed.

Midwest and Great Lakes#

Adds: Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird, Baltimore Oriole, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Common Grackle and winter White-throated Sparrow, with Purple Finch and Evening Grosbeak in irruption years.

Will not come: Lesser Goldfinch, Anna's Hummingbird, Steller's Jay and California Scrub-Jay, all listed as western. Carolina Wren and Eastern Towhee are listed for the East and South, so in the northern Midwest they are edge-of-range birds at best.

Food and feeders: the most nyjer-productive region in winter, because goldfinch flocks and siskin irruptions overlap. Run nyjer alongside sunflower, not instead of it.

Timing: the lakeshore lags the interior by one to two weeks in spring and holds fall migrants longer. Orioles arrive in the first half of May, hummingbirds late April in the south of the region and into May farther north.

The local problem: the spring blackbird pulse. Common Grackle and Red-winged Blackbird return in late winter in flocks that empty a hopper in a morning. Both rate cracked corn and hearts at the top of their preferences, so pull the corn and the open tray and run safflower for four to six weeks. Method in grackles and blackbirds.

Great Plains and prairie provinces#

Our range labels do not carve out a Plains category. This is the seam where eastern lists thin westward and western lists thin eastward, so the continent-wide thirteen are not the floor here, they are most of the list.

Adds: Black-capped Chickadee across the northern Plains and prairie provinces. Cardinal, Blue Jay and Common Grackle push west along river corridors and town plantings, so your distance from the creek bottoms matters more than the state line.

Will not come: the Pacific and mountain specialists. California Scrub-Jay is limited to west of the Sierra and Cascade crest and Steller's Jay is a mountain forest bird. Lesser Goldfinch is listed for the Southwest, West Coast and Texas, so only the southern high plains are worth a map check.

Food and feeders: ground and tray feeding matters more here than anywhere, because doves, juncos, sparrows and blackbirds dominate the numbers. White proso millet scattered low does more than another hanging tube, and small ports beat open trays because seed blows away.

Timing: juncos arrive with the first strong cold fronts in October and stay into April. Irruptions key off northern seed crops, not the calendar.

The local problem: wind and no cover. Birds will not commit to a station with no escape perch within about 15 ft, so stack cover before buying another feeder and site it on the lee side of a building. See where to put a bird feeder.

Rocky Mountains and Intermountain West#

Adds: Steller's Jay, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Evening Grosbeak, Pine Siskin, and Black-capped Chickadee in the north of the region.

Will not come: the eastern woodland set. Cardinal, Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird, Baltimore Oriole, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Common Grackle are all listed East, Midwest or South. Ruby-throated Hummingbird is listed as east of the Rockies. Your hummingbirds are western species outside this dataset, which is no reason to skip the nectar feeder.

Food and feeders: peanuts and striped sunflower punch above their weight, because Steller's Jay rates both at the top.

Timing: everything keys off elevation, which matters as much as latitude here: 3,000 ft and 9,000 ft in one county give different lists. High-country feeders see winter finches November through April, and the mountain spring runs four to six weeks behind the valley town below it.

The local problem: bears, and it outranks everything else. A feeder is concentrated calories where bears travel, and a food-conditioned bear usually ends up dead. Most agencies ask for feeders down from spring emergence to denning, commonly April into late November, hummingbird feeders included. Get the dates from your own wildlife agency, not a national article. Guidance in bears at feeders.

Southwest and desert Southwest#

Adds: Lesser Goldfinch, Anna's Hummingbird year-round, Northern Cardinal (our dataset does list the Southwest for it), and Steller's Jay in the sky islands. House Finch and Mourning Dove dominate the numbers here.

Will not come: Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Common Grackle, White-throated Sparrow and Ruby-throated Hummingbird. The quail and thrashers that do use feeders here are outside our 34, so a local checklist runs longer.

Food and feeders: water beats seed. A shallow dish with moving water pulls in more species than any feeder here. See bird baths and water. Nyjer and hearts do the work for Lesser Goldfinch, and suet comes down from late spring through fall.

Timing: the seasons here are wet and dry rather than warm and cold. Anna's is present all year, so nectar is a twelve-month job, and winter juncos run October to March.

The local problem: heat. Nectar ferments fast above 90 °F and can go bad in a day at desert temperatures, so change it every one to two days in summer and hang it in shade. Seed cooks in a metal tube in full sun: fill small, fill often, move the station into afternoon shade.

Pacific Coast, California to British Columbia#

Adds: Anna's Hummingbird year-round, California Scrub-Jay west of the Sierra and Cascade crest, Steller's Jay, Lesser Goldfinch, Purple Finch, Pine Siskin, Red-breasted Nuthatch, and Black-capped Chickadee through Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

Will not come: the eastern list, and one surprise. Common Grackle is listed for the East, Midwest and South, so the big black birds on your lawn are almost certainly starlings or Brewer's Blackbirds. Cardinal, Blue Jay, titmouse, Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird, Baltimore Oriole and Ruby-throated Hummingbird are all out of range.

Food and feeders: nectar is permanent here, not seasonal. Peanuts run year-round for the two jays, which rate shelled and in-shell peanuts at the top of their lists.

Timing: the coastal winter is mild and the feeding year barely stops. Juncos drop in from higher ground in October rather than the far north, and Anna's nests in midwinter, exactly when a lapsed feeder hurts most.

The local problem: overwintering hummingbirds through cold snaps. Anna's does not migrate out, so a hard freeze locks up a feeder a bird depends on. Run two and rotate them: fresh one out before first light, spare in overnight. Never add anything to the nectar to stop it freezing. It stays 4 parts water to 1 part plain white sugar, no dye, no substitutes. North of about Oregon the second problem is rain, and that is mold, not cold.

Boreal and far north#

Adds: Black-capped Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Purple Finch, Pine Siskin and Evening Grosbeak. Dark-eyed Junco inverts here, present in summer rather than winter. Blue Jay reaches the eastern boreal, though our range field lists it East, Midwest and South, so check a provincial map. Redpolls and crossbills are a large part of a real boreal list and are not in our 34.

Will not come: White-breasted Nuthatch, which our dataset explicitly excludes from the far north, along with cardinal, titmouse, Carolina Wren, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird, the eastern orioles and grosbeaks of summer, and every western jay.

Food and feeders: fat, in volume. Suet and black oil sunflower carry the winter, and consumption runs higher than anywhere else because the birds burn calories through twenty-hour nights. Feed sunflower in shell rather than hearts: hearts take up moisture and freeze into a block.

Timing: the year is fixed at both ends. Winter is the long dependable season, and spring is short: juncos, sparrows and flickers arrive within a few weeks of ice-out.

The local problem: cold. Plastic goes brittle and cracks below roughly minus 20 °C and any spring-loaded mechanism will seize, so use simple wooden hoppers and open suet cages. Bears close the other end: across most of the boreal, feeders come down in spring and go back up after denning.

Every species in the dataset, with its range#

Checking your own location properly#

Regions are drawn with a thick pen, and you may live 40 miles inside or outside a boundary this page shows as a straight line. Four ways to get the real answer, no one of them the only tool:

1. Range maps per species. A field guide or species account shows breeding, winter and year-round ranges in separate colors. That distinction is the whole game: a bird can be in your range and still be absent nine months of the year.
2. Local weekly abundance data. Community databases show what is being reported in your county, by week.
3. Your state, provincial or territorial checklist. Wildlife agencies and local naturalist chapters publish feeder lists far more accurate than anything continental.
4. The feeder two streets over. Neighborhood birders know your suburb better than any map.

Then test the list against the calendar, not just the map. Half the "missing" birds people ask about are seasonal absences: juncos in July, orioles in October, goldfinches still present but molted out of yellow. Cross-check the bird feeding calendar before changing anything.

What does not change anywhere#

Black oil sunflower is the default seed everywhere. It has the broadest appeal of any single seed, and no region on this page has a better first bag. All the rest is a supplement to black oil sunflower, and the regional question is only what you add next.

Hygiene is not regional. Humid regions need it more often, but nowhere skips it. Clean on a schedule, one part household bleach to nine parts water, ten minutes of contact, rinse and dry completely. Take feeders down anywhere an agency reports a local salmonellosis or avian influenza event. Method in how to clean a bird feeder.

Window collisions kill birds in every region. Glass is the same hazard in Winnipeg as in Atlanta, and window strikes are a leading human-related cause of bird mortality in North America. Feeders belong under 3 ft from the glass or more than 30 ft away, never the band between. See window strikes.

Water works everywhere. It is the strongest draw in the desert and in a hard freeze, and it reaches species that never touch seed.

If your list is still short after checking the range field, the problem has moved from geography to your yard: no birds at my feeder.

Frequently asked questions#

Why don't I get cardinals in Seattle or Portland?

Because Northern Cardinals do not live there. Our dataset gives their range as East, Midwest, South and Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest is none of those. There is no seed, feeder or placement that will produce one. The same is true of Blue Jay, Tufted Titmouse and Carolina Wren west of the Rockies. The Pacific Northwest substitutes are Steller's Jay for the jay slot, Black-capped Chickadee and chestnut-backed chickadees for the small perching birds, and Anna's Hummingbird year round, which no eastern yard gets at all.

Why do I have no chickadees in Florida or south Texas?

Black-capped Chickadee is listed for the North, Midwest, Northeast and Northwest, so most of the Deep South is outside it. Much of the Southeast has Carolina Chickadee instead, which behaves almost identically at a feeder and is not in our 34-species dataset. The far southern tip of Florida and the lower Rio Grande have neither. If you are in the Gulf states and getting a small gray and black bird on sunflower, it is almost certainly a Carolina Chickadee, and everything written here about chickadee feeding applies to it.

When do juncos arrive at feeders in my area?

Dark-eyed Juncos are listed as continent-wide in winter, and arrival keys off latitude and elevation rather than a date. In southern Canada and the northern tier of states they typically appear with the first sustained cold in October. Across the central states they build through November. In the southern end of their winter range they may not be regular until December, and in a mild winter they barely arrive at all. They leave in reverse, thinning through March and mostly gone by late April. In the boreal and the high mountains they are a breeding bird instead, present in summer and gone in winter.

Do I have to take my feeders down for bears?

In the Rockies, the Intermountain West, the northern Northeast and most of the boreal, yes, and the local wildlife agency sets the dates. The common pattern is feeders down from spring emergence until bears den, roughly April into late November, with hummingbird feeders included because sugar water is a strong attractant. A bear that gets a food reward at a feeder often has to be destroyed, so this is not a preference. Check your state, provincial or territorial agency page for the dates where you are, since they vary by hundreds of miles.

Should I take hummingbird feeders down in the fall?

It depends entirely on which hummingbird you have. East of the Rockies, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds leave in fall and there is no harm in leaving one feeder up two weeks past your last sighting for late migrants. On the Pacific coast and in parts of the Southwest, Anna's Hummingbird is listed as year-round, so the feeder is a winter commitment: nectar out at dawn, swapped when it freezes, kept clean through the cold months. Taking it down in October on the coast removes a food source birds are still using.

Why do grackles wreck my feeders in spring but not in winter?

Common Grackles are listed for the East, Midwest and South, and they are migratory across the northern part of that range. They return in a pulse in late winter and early spring, often in mixed flocks with Red-winged Blackbirds and starlings, and hit feeders hard for a few weeks before dispersing to nest. The seasonal fix is to switch the main feeder to safflower, which cardinals and chickadees take and grackles largely ignore, and to pull the open tray for the duration.

Sources and further reading

1. All About Birds species guide Cornell Lab of Ornithology Range maps and seasonal status for every species named here
2. Project FeederWatch Cornell Lab of Ornithology Regional feeder species patterns and food pairings
3. eBird Cornell Lab of Ornithology Local bar charts and county-level abundance by week
4. Birds Canada Birds Canada Feeder species and winter timing in Canada and the prairie provinces
5. Bird Feeding and Care National Audubon Society Hygiene, water and window guidance that applies in all regions