Is It OK to Feed Wild Birds?
Find out what to feed birds in your backyard or garden. Our handy wild bird food chart lists the types of seeds, nuts, and other foods that are liked most by different types of wild birds so that you can enjoy visits from many feathered friends!
Is It Good or Bad to Feed the Birds?
When it comes to general backyard birds, it鈥檚 fine to offer these supplements. During times of extreme weather, studies show that extra bird food can provide a nutritional boost and provide a helping hand.
That said, the best way to feed the birds is to create a bird-friendly habitat with natural food; this means native trees and shrubs.
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Beyond the natural habitat, it鈥檚 important to:
- Feed safe, appropriate food for birds. See our chart below. NEVER feed bread which not only provides little nutrition but also may cause an unhealthy condition referred to as 鈥渁ngel wing.鈥
- Clean bird feeders. Owning a bird feeder is a responsibility. Properly clean to avoid the spread of viruses and parasites.
- Do not feed birds if it significantly changes their behavior (for example, aggressive birds such as seagulls, endangered birds such as snow owls, etc.).
Your reward is the opportunity to attract some feathered friends to your backyard and garden鈥攁nd enjoy watching wild birds from your window!
What little food that is available can get buried under deep snow. The bird feeder that you place in your backyard aides the survival of birds in harsh winters.
Wild Bird Food Preferences
For most wild birds, seeds are the best source of high energy food for wild birds. (Do not feed birds bread.)
The seed that attracts the widest variety of birds, and so the mainstay for most backyard bird feeders, is sunflower.
Other varieties of seed can help attract different types of birds to round out your backyard visitors. In general, mixtures that contain red millet, oats, and other 鈥渇illers鈥 are not attractive to most birds and can lead to a lot of waste as the birds sort through the mix.
Click here for a larger PDF of the below Wild Bird Food Chart.
Sunflower Seeds
When it comes to sunflower seeds, note that there are two kinds of sunflower鈥攂lack oil and striped. The black oil seeds (鈥渙ilers鈥) have very thin shells, easy for virtually all seed-eating birds to crack open, and the kernels within have a high fat content, extremely valuable for most winter birds. Striped sunflower seeds have a thicker shell, much harder for House Sparrows and blackbirds to crack open. So if you鈥檙e inundated with species you鈥檇 rather not subsidize at your black oil sunflower, before you do anything else, try switching to striped sunflower.
People living in apartments or who have trouble raking up seed shells under their feeders often offer shelled sunflower. Many birds love this, as of course do squirrels, and it鈥檚 expensive. Without the protection of the shell, sunflower hearts and chips quickly spoil, and can harbor dangerous bacteria, so it鈥檚 important to offer no more than can be eaten in a day or two.
Sunflower is very attractive to squirrels, a problem for people who don鈥檛 wish to subsidize them. Some kinds of squirrel baffles, and some specialized feeders, are fairly good at excluding them. Sunflower in the shell can be offered in a wide variety of feeders, including trays, tube feeders, hoppers, and acrylic window feeders. Sunflower hearts and chips shouldn鈥檛 be offered in tube feeders where moisture can collect.
Suet Cake
Birds love a simple suet cake, especially chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and bug-eating birds. Note that a lot commercial suet cakes have too much filler (oatmeal, cornmeal, millet) and very little of the peanuts and high-quality ingredients that birds actually need when temperatures become severe. See how to make suet here. Even better is straight suet though it鈥檚 expensive. You can generally get chunks of suet at the butcher鈥檚 or supermarket.
Read more about gardening for the birds.
Learn about choosing the right bird feeders.
See our video demonstrating how to feed the birds in winter.
Catherine Boeckmann
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What is the best way to serve up the apples that some birds and raisins, nuts or any other food from the house?
Fantastic wild bird food chart you have there! Perhaps this could be expanded to include mealworms and other grubs as these are readily available in most shops and the birds go nuts for them.
I have stopped offering food for the birds because I notice the goldfinches wouldn't touch the seedheads left for them, so I figure if they don't want to eat the healthy coneflowers and blazing stars, they don't need commercial offerings. And it worked, I see the same birds come into my yard as before and it's more fun because they are pecking through the weeds and really every surface has had a bird on it, quite hilarious to be doing the dishes and see a Carolina wren pop its head around the brick and climb up the house!
We have to take our feeders down in the fall due to the number of bears in our area, but as soon as the bears go into hibernation we put the feeders back up.
I think we feed the birds in order to enjoy a little life and color during those long winter days. Maybe we do it as much for ourselves as we do for the birds. Either way I enjoy the birds, they enjoy my feed....win, win all around!!
Is there a certain date of the year that we are suppose to stop feeding wild birds in the northeast section of the USA? Some people think they are able to find their own food. Please answer. Nancy Hullinger
I never stop feeding them, they can gather their own food. I heard it take the stress of them when feeding little ones in the summer. It's not a must to stop feeding them, it's what u want to do !
speaking only for myself, I NEVER stop feeding the birds.
I keep about 8 feeders in the yard at all times, & go through about 500 POUNDS of seed a year on average.
I also feed the squirrels, which keeps them out of the bird feed.
It never occurred to me to stop feeding birds. I should think they need food in the winter, even if they do fly around and find their own.
We shovel off the deck and put out a feeder heavy on sunflower seeds, and what a beautiful sight in the winter, blue jays and cardinals, juncos and sparrows. Looks like a Christmas card.
I've found most birds like sunflower seed and peanuts (in shell, or shelled, from a jar). Blue jays pick and choose the peanuts and 'swallow' one in their crops. They will hold a peanut with their toes and peck it open..... Cardinals have tiny beaks but I've watched them wrestle with a shell peanut trying to open it..... Smaller peanuts are eaten by all birds, I think. Unless the squirrels are out and hog all of them.
There's no hard rule. Many people choose to feed in the winter when birds' natural food is buried; other folks feed year-round to attract them closer. According to Audubon, feeding doesn't hurt the birds as they get their food from a variety of sources and they will migrate when they need to do, regardless.
