Best Bird Feeders Guide

What to put in your bird feeder

There is a huge variety of food that you can offer to birds from your bird feeding stations, here are our recommendations:

• Niger bird seed
• Sunflower seed and hearts
• Peanuts and peanut butter
• Suet
• Mealworms and calci-worms
• Fruit (dried fruit like raisins and fresh fruit)

You can refer to the advice above for which feeder is most suitable for your chosen food. Read more: Types of Bird Food

Where should you place a bird feeder?

Bird feeder placement is important to get right if you want birds to feel safe and secure when they are in your garden. Of course, the temptation is to pop them wherever they look best, but if you want to turn your space into a bird-feeding paradise there are a few factors to consider when you’re deciding where to place your bird feeders:

• Viewpoint - your bird feeder is no good if birds can’t see it. It needs to be visible and high off the ground. Using a bird feeding stationto hang your feeders from is a great way to achieve a better viewpoint.
• Water - birds need to stay hydrated as well as fed, and they can struggle to find a water source that they are able to safely drink from. Provide a bird bath or shallow dish of water near your stations.
• Protection - place your feeders in a high up, sheltered spot to keep feeding birds away from predators. They should be no less than 10ft away from trees and bushes so that cats and other predators can’t easily leap to the feeders.

Read more: Where to Position Your Bird Feeders

Cleaning advice

Cleaning your bird feeders is essential to make sure that diseases and illnesses aren’t spread through your local bird population. This usually happens when contaminated droppings become mixed in with the food that other birds then eat.

How to clean a bird feeder

1. Remove the feeders from their stands and dispose of any un-eaten food (do not re-use it)
2. Rinse off any residue that is stuck to the feeders with hot, soapy water, and use a bottle brush to scrub off anything that remains
3. Rinse with cold water and leave the feeder to dry off
4. Wipe down with a 5% disinfectant spray, preferably a veterinary disinfectant
5. Refill once completely dry

The same steps can be taken to clean bird baths and water stations. If your bird bath is a heavy, permanent fixture, tip or scoop the old water out before cleaning and rinsing out thoroughly.

Your feeders should be regularly cleaned regardless of whether they still have feed in them or not. If the birds aren’t eating what you are offering over 2 – 3 days, give them less food. Food, when left out, can go off if left out for too long. Cleaning your feeders is simple enough to do and will take you five minutes. We’d recommend giving them a once over every week.

Purchase safe, affordable bird hygiene products

Keeping pests & unwanted visitors away

You should take action to keep any pests and unwanted visitors like squirrels away from your bird food. This will prevent birds being preyed on in your garden, as well as stopping other wildlife eating food that hasn’t been put out for them. As well this limiting the frustration of them eating food which is meant for the birds, it is important to try and prevent cross-contamination and the spread of diseases between different species.

How to keep cats away from bird feeders

We’ve written a guide on keeping cats out of the garden to prioritise the safety of birds, but to summarise:

• Grow plants that cats don’t like such as lavender, thyme, and holly
• Put down thing’s cats don’t like the smell of, like coffee grounds, citrus, and vinegar
• Make some noise! Windchimes can spook cats and make them run away but investing in an ultra-sonic sound device with a motion sensor is even better.

How to squirrel proof your bird feeder

Squirrels are every bird-lovers worst enemy. If you have a regular squirrel visitor who eats your bird food and leaves nothing for anyone else, there are plenty of steps you can take to keep them away.

Install a baffle – this is a small cone-like device that goes on the pole of your bird feeding station and prevents squirrels from climbing all the way to the top.

Make it slippery – making the pole of your feeding station slippery will stop the squirrel from being able to climb it. Vaseline does the job well.

Get a squirrel-proof feeder – you can purchase feeders that are squirrel proof. They have a cage around them that birds are able to peck through, but squirrels can’t reach through.

Do bird feeding stations attract rats?

Yes, they can attract rats if the areas around them aren’t cleaned regularly. Rats will be attracted to fallen or discarded food. Sweep up around your bird feeding stations regularly and choose bird feeders that contain the food better (like Hopper stations) if you struggle to keep up with the mess some feeding birds leave behind.