Feeder Types

Tube Feeders

The tube feeder is the workhorse of the North American backyard. It is also the feeder most often bought in the wrong size, filled with the wrong seed and hung in the wrong place.

A tube feeder is a vertical clear cylinder, usually 12 to 30 inches (30 to 75 cm) tall, with feeding ports spaced down its sides and a perch below each one. Seed falls by gravity, birds take it a seed at a time from the ports, and you can see at a glance how much is left. It suits small and medium perching birds: finches, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, siskins and the smaller woodpeckers.

That transparency is the reason the design has dominated for fifty years, and the reason it punishes mistakes. A hopper hides stale seed. A tube shows you the seed sitting there untouched, week after week, until you work out why.

This guide covers what to put in a tube feeder, how port and perch geometry decides which species get to eat, where to hang it, and the specific construction faults that make an otherwise sensible feeder a waste of money.

What a tube feeder is good at#

Tube feeders do three things better than any other design.

They keep seed dry. A capped tube with drainage in the base sheds rain far better than an open tray, which matters more than most people realize: wet seed is the leading cause of a feeder going quiet, and it is the start of the chain that ends in moldy, clumped seed and a health risk to the birds.

They select for the birds most people want. The species that hang comfortably from a narrow perch are, broadly, the ones that make a yard feel alive: the black-capped chickadee, the American goldfinch, the white-breasted nuthatch, the tufted titmouse. Heavy flocking birds struggle on the same perch.

They meter the seed out. Because only a few birds feed at once and each takes one seed at a time, a tube feeder wastes far less than an open tray that a single blue jay can empty in a morning.

Which seed belongs in a tube#

Only free-flowing seed of a fairly uniform size will work. Anything else bridges, jams the port, or gets flicked out onto the ground.

The single most common tube feeder problem is a bag of supermarket mix. Birds are not being fussy when they throw milo on the ground: most feeder species genuinely cannot digest it well, and the ones that can are mostly ground feeders that were never going to use the tube. If your feeder is surrounded by a spreading circle of discarded seed, read bird seed mixes before you buy another bag.

Port and perch geometry: the part nobody reads#

Two dimensions decide which birds can feed at your tube, and manufacturers rarely list either.

Perch length. A perch under about 3/4 inch (2 cm) gives a chickadee or finch plenty to hold and gives a common grackle or European starling almost nothing. Perches of 2 inches (5 cm) or more, or a wide tray ringing the base, let the big flocking birds settle and feed at leisure. If blackbirds are your problem, a short-perch tube is the cheapest fix available. See grackles and blackbirds taking over for the full set of tactics.

Port opening. Sunflower ports are roughly 3/8 to 1/2 inch (10 to 13 mm). Nyjer ports are about 1/8 inch (3 mm), because nyjer is a tiny seed that will pour out of anything larger. This is why you cannot simply put nyjer in a general-purpose tube, and why a dedicated nyjer feeder is a separate purchase rather than a luxury.

Some tube feeders have upward-facing ports or a small hood over each port. Both are deliberate: they keep rain out and force the bird to work at an angle that flocking species find awkward. They also slow the seed slightly, which is a feature, not a fault.

Where to hang a tube feeder#

Three distances matter, and they pull against each other.

• 10 to 12 feet (3 to 3.5 m) from cover. Close enough that a chickadee can dash to a branch with its seed, far enough that a cat cannot ambush from the shrub. This is the single strongest predictor of whether a new feeder gets found quickly.
• Either under 3 feet (1 m) or over 30 feet (9 m) from glass. The counterintuitive rule from feeders and windows: very close means a startled bird cannot build up lethal speed, and far away means it is unlikely to mistake a reflection for sky. The distances in between are the dangerous ones.
• 5 feet (1.5 m) up, 10 feet (3 m) from any launch point. The squirrel geometry, covered in full under how to stop squirrels. A tube hanging from a tree branch is a squirrel feeder with extra steps.

Hang it where you will see it from a window you actually use, or you will stop refilling it in February. More on siting in where to hang a bird feeder.

The five faults that ruin a tube feeder#

After a season outdoors, tube feeders fail in predictable ways. All five are visible in the shop if you know to look.

1. Plastic port collars. A squirrel will gnaw a plastic port into an open wound that dumps the entire seed column on the ground. Metal, usually die-cast or stamped steel around the port, is the one upgrade genuinely worth paying for.
2. A base that does not come apart. If the bottom plate is glued, riveted or held by a screw you need a driver for, you will not clean it as often as you should. Look for a twist-off or clip-off base. See how to clean a bird feeder.
3. No drainage. The base needs actual holes, not just "drainage channels" molded into the plastic. Water gets in through the ports in wind-driven rain no matter what the marketing says.
4. Too much capacity. A tube holding 4 pounds of seed sounds like less refilling. In a quiet yard it means seed sitting for six weeks going rancid. Match capacity to your traffic: most yards want a tube that empties in about a week. This is the argument in feeder size and capacity.
5. A wide bottom tray. Sold as "reduces waste". It also converts your selective tube feeder into a grackle platform and collects wet hulls. Some trays are removable, which is the right answer: fit it when you want cardinals, take it off when the blackbirds arrive.

Squirrel resistance, honestly assessed#

A plain tube feeder offers no squirrel resistance at all. Squirrels hang from the cap, chew the ports, and empty it.

What actually works is the pole and baffle beneath it, not the feeder itself. A correctly sized baffle on a smooth pole, sited to the 5-7-9 geometry described in stopping squirrels, will defeat a squirrel on almost any feeder. A weight-activated squirrel-proof tube is a reasonable second line, and switching to safflower seed is the cheapest third. Greasing the pole is not an option: it fouls feathers and can be fatal.

Maintenance that keeps a tube working#

Take the feeder down, empty it and check three things every two weeks:

• Smell the seed. Fresh sunflower smells faintly nutty. Rancid seed smells like old oil and paint. Birds detect it long before you do, which is why a full feeder can go untouched.
• Look at the base plate. A dark ring or a damp cake is your cue to strip and wash the whole tube, not just rinse it.
• Check the port collars for chew marks. A widened port is why your seed level drops overnight without a bird in sight, a diagnosis covered in my feeder empties overnight.

Wash with hot soapy water and a bottle brush, then a dilute bleach soak, then dry completely before refilling. The full method and dilution ratios are in safe disinfectants for feeders.

A tube feeder setup that works#

If you want one recommendation to act on, this is it:

• A 4 to 6 port tube with metal ports and short perches, holding roughly one week of seed for your yard.
• Black oil sunflower, bought in quantities you will use within a month and stored in a sealed container.
• Mounted on a smooth steel pole with a baffle, 5 feet (1.5 m) up and 10 feet (3 m) from the nearest branch, fence or roof.
• Sited 10 to 12 feet (3 to 3.5 m) from a shrub, and either very close to or very far from the nearest window.
• Cleaned every two weeks, fully dismantled.

Add a platform feeder at ground level for the doves, juncos and cardinals that the tube excludes, and a suet feeder for the woodpeckers, and you have covered most of what a North American yard can attract. The full build is in building a complete feeding station.