Bird Food

Bird Food Chart: Who Eats What

Five foods bring in almost every bird in this chart. The rest of the list is for the times you want one particular species and are not getting it.

Almost every bird below can be reached with five foods: black oil sunflower, white proso millet, suet, nyjer and peanuts. Everything else on this page is refinement, either because you want one specific species or because something you expected to see has not shown up.

The chart is split into three groups by how the bird feeds, not by taxonomy, because that is what determines the hardware you need. Seed eaters that shell or swallow whole seed come first, then clingers that work vertical surfaces, then the fruit, nectar and insect birds along with the large species that dominate open trays.

Ranges are approximate and regional. A food listed as secondary in one state may be a staple in another, especially in late winter when birds are less selective than usual.

How to read this chart#

Top foods are what a bird will cross a yard for. Put one of these out and, if the species is in your area and your setup suits it, you should see it inside two weeks.

Also takes are foods a bird will accept once it is already visiting. These are useful for keeping a bird at your feeders through a season, but they rarely recruit a new one.

Preferred feeder is the style that species uses most comfortably. This column matters more than people expect. Cardinals eat black oil sunflower enthusiastically and still ignore a narrow tube feeder because there is nowhere solid to stand.

Where a species has a profile on this site, its name links to it, and the profile carries the regional detail, timing and identification notes that a table cannot hold.

Group 1: seed eaters, finches, sparrows and doves#

These are the birds a seed feeder is built for. The split inside the group is between the perching seed eaters that will work a tube and the ground foragers that want a flat surface.

Group 2: clingers, chickadees, nuthatches and woodpeckers#

These birds work vertical surfaces and can hang upside down. They take fat and protein far more readily than the seed eaters, and most of them cache food rather than eating it on the spot, which is why a chickadee makes twenty trips an hour and never seems to eat anything.

Woodpecker traffic is the clearest seasonal signal in the whole chart. Suet consumption in most yards triples between October and January, then falls away as insects return. The temperature limits, cake types and tail-prop feeder design are covered in the complete suet guide.

Group 3: fruit, nectar, insects and the big birds#

This group is where feeder choice stops being optional. Nectar needs a sealed reservoir, jelly needs a shallow cup, and mealworms need a dish with sides.

The last four rows are the ones people write in about. None of them can be excluded by food alone, but the balance shifts hard if you drop cracked corn and open trays and move sunflower into short-perch tubes. The full set of tactics is in grackles and blackbirds taking over.

The five foods that cover almost everything#

Count the columns above and the same names keep appearing.

1. Black oil sunflower appears as a top or secondary food for more species in this chart than anything else. Thin shell, high fat, near-universal.
2. White proso millet covers the entire ground-feeding half of Group 1: doves, juncos, native sparrows, towhees and buntings.
3. Suet covers Group 2 almost single-handedly, plus wrens, bluebirds and starlings.
4. Nyjer is narrow but decisive: goldfinches and siskins in numbers, and very little else.
5. Peanuts pull in jays, titmice, nuthatches and the larger woodpeckers, and they are the fastest way to get a jay to commit to a yard.

A sixth food earns its place for a different reason. Safflower is not on any bird's top list, but cardinals, finches, chickadees and titmice eat it while grackles, starlings and most squirrels leave it alone. It buys selectivity rather than variety.

Matching the feeder to the food#

The chart's fourth column collapses into a short set of pairings.

Two feeders and two foods cover the majority: a sunflower tube and a suet cage. A ground tray with millet is the highest-value third addition in almost every yard. The build order is set out in building a complete feeding station.

If a bird on this chart is not visiting#

Work through this in order, since the first two causes account for most cases.

Is it in your range and season? Check the species profile first. Half of all missing-bird questions are about a bird that does not occur there, or does not occur there in that month.

Is the food right, and is it fresh? Stale seed is invisible and decisive. Sunflower should smell faintly nutty, and nyjer more than a few months old is refused outright. Storage habits are in storing bird seed.

Is the feeder style right? A cardinal needs somewhere to stand, a goldfinch needs a narrow port, a flicker needs a tail prop. The right food in the wrong hardware reads as no food at all.

Is there cover within about 12 feet (3.5 m)? Most small birds will not commit to an exposed feeder. The distances are covered in where to hang a bird feeder.

Have you given it long enough? Two weeks is normal for a new feeder, and longer in a yard with no established feeding. See how long until birds find a new feeder.

Is there water? A shallow, moving water source brings in species that no seed reaches, including waxwings, warblers and thrushes. Details in bird baths.

A starter chart for a new yard#

If you are building from nothing, this order adds the most species per dollar:

1. Black oil sunflower in a tube feeder. Finches, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches.
2. A suet cage on a pole or trunk. Every woodpecker in your area, plus wrens.
3. White millet on a ground tray near cover. Doves, juncos, sparrows, towhees.
4. A platform or wide hopper with sunflower and safflower. Cardinals, grosbeaks, jays.
5. Seasonal specialists: nyjer in late winter for siskins, nectar from spring through fall, mealworms in the nesting season, fruit and jelly in the weeks orioles pass through.

Add a shallow water source at any point and it will outperform steps four and five. The condensed version of all of this is in how to attract more birds, fast.