Primary Research

The Feeder Log

An open record of what actually turns up at backyard feeders, built from observations submitted by the people watching them. Every row is public, the whole set is downloadable, and the results below are recomputed from it on every page load.

By the ProBirdFeeder research teamMethod: our research methodsUpdated 4 min read

Why this exists

  • Almost every bird feeding article on the internet, this site's guides included, rests on the same small stack of published sources. Useful, but it means nobody is producing new observations.
  • This is the part of the site that generates data instead of restating it: which species use which feeder and which food, where, and in what month.
  • Nothing is hidden behind a login and nothing is sold. The raw table is a CSV download, licensed CC BY 4.0.
  • Results are published with their sample size attached, and cells thinner than 5 observations are shown as thin rather than dressed up as a finding.
Observations0submitted so far
Regions0states and provinces
Species0recorded at feeders
LicenceCC BY 4.0open data, reusable

Log an observation#

One submission describes one feeder, on one day, with one food in it. If you run four feeders, that is four submissions, and that is exactly the structure that makes the data useful: it keeps feeder type and food attached to the species that actually showed up.

Species seen feeding at this feeder

Tick every species you saw actually feed. Birds that only perched nearby do not count: the whole value of this dataset is that it records use, not presence.

No account, no email address, nothing stored that identifies you. Submissions are rate limited and reviewed, and anything that looks like spam is dropped rather than published.

See the live results

What happens to your row#

It goes straight into the public table and into the aggregate counts, with no editing. Everything on the results page is computed live from the submitted rows, so a row you add today changes the published numbers today. The CSV export is the same data with nothing removed except the moderation flag.

What is never stored: your email, your name unless you type one in, your precise location, and your IP address. Rate limiting works off a salted one-way hash that cannot be reversed into an address, described in full on the methods page.

Running a real test instead#

Casual observations are welcome and they are what most of this table will be. If you want to contribute something stronger, the open field protocols are structured tests with fixed procedures, defined scoring scales and their own datasheets, covering seed preference, baffle geometry, nectar spoilage, window markers and more.