Tube vs hopper feeder: which one belongs in your yard

The short answer

• Buy the tube first. It suits the small perching birds that arrive at a new station soonest, it wastes less seed, and it is far easier to keep clean.
• Buy the hopper instead if cardinals, jays, grosbeaks or doves are the birds you actually want, because those species need a standing surface a bare tube does not give them.
• A hopper holds roughly 100 fl oz against a tube's 40, and that capacity is a liability rather than a feature in warm or damp weather.
• A hopper also handles millet and cracked corn, which a tube cannot, and that is what brings in juncos and sparrows along with grackles and house sparrows.
• If your only objection to the tube is that cardinals cannot use it, a wrap-around tray solves the problem for a few dollars and you keep the tube's advantages.

Buy the tube first. It brings in the small perching birds that colonize a new station fastest, it wastes the least seed, it is the easiest of the two to wash properly, and it costs less to fill because it holds less. The hopper wins in one specific circumstance, and it is a common one: your target list includes cardinals, jays, grosbeaks or doves, birds that need a surface to stand on and will otherwise feed on whatever the tube's customers knock to the ground. If that is your yard, buy the hopper and accept a larger cleaning job.

One structural difference, and everything that follows from it#

A tube keeps seed in a vertical column and meters it through small ports. A hopper keeps seed behind a clear wall and lets gravity feed it out onto an open ledge, usually under a roof.

That single difference produces every other difference in this comparison. The port meters, so waste is low and only birds that can perch at a port get fed. The ledge does not meter, so seed is available in bulk to anything standing there, which is generous to large birds and generous to grackles at the same time.

The species arithmetic#

This is the part that decides most purchases, so it is worth looking at the birds rather than the hardware.

Top top-tier favorite Yes eats readily Some takes occasionally Rare rarely No not a feeder food

Read the sunflower columns. Chickadees, house finches and goldfinches rate it highly and can all work a tube. Cardinals rate black oil and hearts at the top of the scale as well, and mostly cannot use a bare tube at all. Juncos and doves are ground birds that will take sunflower happily from a ledge and never from a port.

Switching from tube to hopper adds cardinals, jays, doves, juncos and, where they occur, evening and rose-breasted grosbeaks. It also adds house sparrows, common grackles and red-winged blackbirds, which is the part the box does not mention. A hopper in grackle country during spring migration can be emptied by a flock in a morning. If that describes your yard, read grackles and blackbirds before choosing.

The tube's real advantages#

Seed turnover. 40 fl oz is roughly 2.5 lb of sunflower. In a yard with steady chickadee and finch traffic, that clears in under a week, which means the seed in the feeder is always fresh. Freshness is not a luxury: stale oily seed is the start of the chain that ends in moldy seed.

Waste. Nothing to sort on means nothing to sweep aside. Fill a tube with one seed and the proportion that ends up under the feeder is small enough that a lawn absorbs it.

Cleaning time. A tube is a cylinder. A bottle brush reaches every internal surface in about a minute, and the whole routine in cleaning a feeder takes ten minutes including the soak. A hopper has corners, a roof cavity and a ledge lip, and takes two to three times as long to do properly.

It fits inside a cage. A tube is the standard core of a caged feeder, which is the most reliable squirrel defense there is. Hoppers rarely fit one, so a hopper's only defense is mounting. See caged versus weight-activated.

The hopper's real advantages#

Every seed-eating bird can use it. The ledge is the whole point. A 45 g cardinal, an 85 g jay and a 120 g mourning dove all stand comfortably. That alone is worth the trade in most yards east of the Rockies.

Weather. The roof overhangs the ledge, so both the seed and the feeding bird stay out of rain and light snow. In a Great Lakes or New England February, a hopper stays in service through weather that shuts a bare tube's ports with ice.

It handles the cheap grains. Millet and cracked corn cannot go in a tube. In a hopper they work, which lets you run white proso millet for juncos and sparrows in winter without setting up a separate ground station.

Refill frequency. In hard weather, on a station with heavy traffic, 6 lb of capacity means one fill every few days instead of daily. That is a genuine benefit in January and a genuine hazard in July.

Choosing: three questions in order#

1. Which bird would you be disappointed not to see? If the answer is a cardinal, a jay, a grosbeak or a dove, take the hopper. If it is a chickadee, a nuthatch or a goldfinch, take the tube. This question settles the majority of cases on its own.
2. How fast does your station clear seed? Under about 0.5 lb a day, the hopper's capacity is working against you and you will be throwing away caked seed. Take the tube, or take a hopper and never fill it past a third.
3. What is your climate doing in the season you feed most? Wet and mild favors the tube's small, fast-turning fills. Cold and snowy favors the hopper's roof.

When neither is the right feeder#

Three situations where this comparison is the wrong question.

You want the full ground guild. Juncos, white-throated sparrows, towhees and doves feed on the ground by preference. A hopper gets some of them; a low tray or ground feeder with millet gets all of them, for less money.

You want woodpeckers, wrens and nuthatches reliably. Neither design is the answer. That is a suet and peanut question, and the platform or tray feeder plus a suet cage covers it better than any seed feeder can.

Squirrels are your actual problem. Then the feeder body is a detail. Both designs are defenseless on a low hook or a tree branch, and both are fine on a properly baffled pole. Sort the pole and baffle geometry first, then come back to this page.

Still undecided, work through how to choose a bird feeder, or answer five questions in the feeder selector and let it rank the designs against your yard rather than in the abstract.

Frequently asked questions#

Is a tube or hopper feeder better for cardinals?

A hopper, clearly. A cardinal weighs about 45 g and needs a ledge to stand on, which is exactly what a hopper's tray provides and what a 2 in perch stub on a tube does not. If you already own a tube, do not replace it: clip a wrap-around tray to the base. That gives cardinals, grosbeaks and juncos a standing surface, catches the seed small birds sweep out, and costs a fraction of a new feeder.

Which feeder wastes less seed?

The tube, by a wide margin. Seed sits in a closed column and comes out a few at a time through ports, so there is very little a bird can sweep aside. A hopper presents a shallow open tray, and any bird that dislikes part of the mix flicks it onto the ground while hunting for the sunflower. Filling either with a single seed rather than a mix removes most of the difference, but the tube still wins.

How much seed should I put in a hopper?

Not a full one, in most yards. A 100 fl oz hopper holds roughly 6 lb of sunflower, and a quiet suburban station may take two weeks to clear that. Seed sitting behind glass in humid weather cakes, bridges and molds. Fill to a depth your birds will clear in about seven days in warm or damp conditions, up to fourteen in cold dry weather, and empty the hopper completely rather than topping it up.

Can I use the same seed in both?

Black oil sunflower and sunflower hearts work in either. Millet, cracked corn and striped sunflower work in a hopper and not in a tube: millet and corn are ground-bird foods that get raked out of ports, and striped sunflower is too big for many tube ports. If you run both feeders, the useful split is sunflower in the tube and a sunflower-plus-millet mix in the hopper.

Which is harder for squirrels?

Neither is hard, and the hopper is worse. A hopper gives a squirrel a wide ledge to sit on and a lid to lever, and its capacity means one animal can remove several pounds in a day. A tube at least limits the rate. Both are solved the same way, by mounting geometry rather than by feeder design: a baffle at 4.5 ft with 8 ft of clear air around the pole.

Sources and further reading

1. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Which feeder designs suit which species groups, and cleaning intervals and method for enclosed feeders
2. Bird Feeding and Care National Audubon Society General feeder and food guidance