Seasonal
Storm and Outage Feeding
Birds feed hard ahead of a front, shelter through the worst of it, and emerge desperate. The useful work happens in the day before the storm and the two days after it, not during.
The short answer
- Fill everything the evening before a storm and again after it passes; during the storm itself, most birds are not at the feeder anyway.
- The 24 to 48 hours after a storm are the hard part, because ice and snow can seal off natural food that was available the day before.
- Take hanging feeders down before sustained winds above roughly 40 mph (65 km/h). A swinging feeder empties itself and a flying one is a hazard.
- In a power outage, an unheated bath can be kept usable with a dark container, a floating ball and a kettle of warm water twice a day.
- Birds survived storms for millions of years without feeders. Nothing on this page is worth injuring yourself for, and no bird needs you to go outside in a hurricane.
- Birds that shelter on your porch or under your eaves want to be left alone, not rescued, fed or brought indoors.
Severe weather is the one time backyard feeding has an obvious argument in its favor. A bird that would normally spend the day covering a few hundred yards of hedgerow can refuel in ten minutes at a full feeder and get back under cover. In an ice storm, where the food supply is not gone but sealed under a glaze, that difference is real.
It is also where the advice gets least honest. Birds handled blizzards, hurricanes and heat waves for a very long time without help, and the mortality that follows a severe event is part of how wild populations work. A feeder softens the edge for the individuals that find it. It does not decide whether a species gets through the winter, and the research behind feeder dependency is reassuring on that point.
So the goal here is modest and practical: put food and water where birds can reach it before the weather closes in, get it back in service quickly afterward, and do neither of those things at any risk to yourself. Everything below is organized around that.
Why after the storm matters more than during#
During the worst of a storm, most small birds are not feeding. They are wedged into dense conifers, cavities, brush piles and the lee side of buildings, sitting still and running down fat reserves. Feeding in driving snow or 50 mph (80 km/h) wind costs more than it returns.
The pressure arrives when it stops. A bird immobile for eighteen hours comes out with depleted reserves into a landscape where the food it knows is under six inches of snow or a quarter inch of ice. That is when a stocked feeder is worth something, and it is also when most people are busy with their own driveway.
Ice is worse than snow for exactly this reason. Snow can be scratched through and blows off branches; a glaze layer welds seed heads, bark crevices and berry clusters shut for days. The tactics in extreme cold feeding apply directly to the aftermath of an ice event.
Fill twice: before and after
The evening before a storm and the first hour after it breaks are the two fills that matter. Anything you do in between is mostly for your own peace of mind, and the birds are not out in it.
The 24 hours before#
The pre-storm routine is much the same whatever the storm is: leave as much reachable food and water as possible, in containers that will survive the weather, with nothing loose that can become a projectile.
| Event | Do the day before | Do as soon as it breaks | Main risk to birds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blizzard or heavy snow | Fill everything, add a covered feeder, scatter dry seed under a shrub | Clear a bare patch of ground, clear ports and perches, refill | Food buried; long freezing night on spent reserves |
| Ice storm | Fill and cover; move a feeder out from under loaded limbs | Free iced ports with warm water, refill, open water | Natural food sealed under glaze for days |
| Hurricane or high wind | Take down and store hanging and nectar feeders; empty the bath | Rehang once the yard is safe to walk | Exhaustion, displacement, lost cover |
| Heat wave | Shade the bath, cut fill volumes, take suet down | Refill water twice daily; keep cleaning hard | Dehydration, spoiled nectar and rancid fat |
| Power outage in a freeze | Fill feeders, set out a dark shallow water container | Refill with hot water twice a day | No open drinking water anywhere in the neighborhood |
- Top every feeder to the brim, including suet cages, and add a second suet feeder if you have one. A partly full tray disappears under snow.
- Put a covered feeder in the mix, and move one feeder close to dense cover so birds can retreat without crossing open ground.
- Scatter a few pounds of seed under a deck or an evergreen, where it stays dry and reachable if everything else is buried.
- Fill and check water, then decide whether the bath survives the storm or gets emptied and stored.
- Take down or secure anything that swings. Hanging feeders in high wind empty themselves and break.
If you have a feeding station on a pole system, check the pole is fully seated in the ground before the ground freezes or saturates. Saturated soil plus a heavy hopper plus wind is how poles end up flat.
Blizzards, snow and ice#
Snow buries things. It covers ground feeding areas, loads platform trays in an hour, packs into feeding ports and hides scattered seed. The work is all about keeping something exposed.
Snow: the problem is burial
- Shovel or sweep a bare patch of ground under a feeder for juncos, doves and sparrows, which feed on the ground by preference. This is the single highest-value job after a snowfall.
- Knock snow off perches, ports and tray edges. A tube feeder with iced ports is a full feeder that no bird can use.
- Watch for seed that got wet in a thaw and refroze into a plug in the tube base. Empty it rather than pouring fresh seed on top.
This is where the winter feeding rule about the last hour of daylight really bites. A bird going into a sub-zero night after a day of digging has very little margin.
When it is ice rather than snow
Ice is a different problem. Food is not buried, it is laminated. Weed seed heads, conifer cones, bark crevices where nuthatches forage and fruit still on the branch all get sealed under a glaze that can last days if temperatures stay just below freezing.
Feeders ice over too. Perches glaze, ports fill and lids freeze down. Warm water from a kettle poured over a hinge works; hitting a cold plastic feeder does not, because polycarbonate and acrylic go brittle in the cold and shatter.
Ice also brings down limbs, and limbs bring down poles, power lines and people. Do not stand under an ice-loaded tree to fill a feeder.
Hurricanes, derechos and high wind#
Wind is the case where the right answer is usually to take feeders down. Sustained winds above roughly 40 mph (65 km/h) empty a hanging tube through its ports, swing a hopper hard enough to break the hanger, and turn a light feeder into something that goes through a window. Nectar feeders are the worst: light and full of liquid.
- Take down hanging feeders, nectar feeders and anything on a shepherd's hook, and store them clean and dry using the method in how to clean a feeder.
- Leave a pole-mounted hopper only if the pole is deeply set and the feeder latches shut.
- Empty and turn over or store pedestal bird baths. A concrete bath basin that blows off its pedestal breaks and can hurt someone.
- Rehang as soon as it is safe to walk the yard, which for a tropical system may be the same afternoon.
After a tropical system the yard often fills with birds that do not belong there: coastal species pushed inland, or exhausted migrants dropped out of the sky. Feed them normally, keep water available, keep cats indoors and leave them alone. Cats and birds matters most when the local birds are exhausted.
Your safety comes before the birds
Do not go out in a blizzard, an ice storm, high wind or an active heat emergency to fill a feeder. Do not climb on ice to reach a hook, do not approach downed lines, and do not work under an ice-loaded tree. Every bird in your yard is better adapted to that weather than you are.
Heat waves and drought#
Extreme heat is the storm people forget. Birds cannot sweat; they dump heat by panting and by radiating from unfeathered skin, so shaded open water becomes the limiting resource. Meanwhile everything spoils faster: suet goes rancid and can foul feathers, nectar ferments in a day, seed molds in the tray.
- Add water before you add food. A shallow bath in shade, refilled twice a day, is the highest-value thing in a heat wave, and moving water pulls in birds that never touch a feeder.
- Change nectar every day above about 90F (32C), not every two days. The rules are in summer feeding.
- Take suet down entirely above roughly 90F (32C) unless it is a no-melt dough, as covered in the suet guide.
- Cut fill volumes so seed turns over in a day or two, and clear the tray daily to stay ahead of moldy seed.
Keeping water open in a power outage#
A heated bath is the first casualty of a winter outage, and open water is what goes missing fastest in a frozen yard. You cannot replicate a heater, but you can buy hours.
- Use a dark, shallow plastic container instead of the usual bath. Dark plastic absorbs more sun and does not crack when the contents freeze. Float a ball or a stick to slow the formation of a solid lid.
- Refill with hot tap water or a kettle twice a day, morning and mid-afternoon. Hot water in a cold basin buys a few hours of open surface.
- Keep the water very shallow, 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm), and add stones so small birds can stand rather than wade.
- Empty it at dusk if you cannot refill it, so you are not leaving a solid block of ice behind.
- Never add salt, glycerin, antifreeze or any other additive. Salt dehydrates and poisons birds, and glycerin coats feathers and destroys their insulating structure, which in freezing weather kills.
If you have a generator, a bath heater is a small load, typically 50 to 150 watts, and running it for an hour twice a day is reasonable once household needs are covered. The full setup, including electrical safety, is in winter water.
Birds sheltering on your porch#
Storms push birds into porches, carports, garages, window wells and the lee side of houses. A Carolina wren on a porch shelf or a mourning dove hunkered against a wall is doing exactly the right thing, and the correct response is to leave it alone and keep pets away.
Do not bring a sheltering bird indoors. House warmth shocks a bird acclimated to freezing weather, indoor air dries feathers, and a bird released into cold after a warm night is worse off than one that never came in. A bird sitting still, alert and puffed up is not in trouble; it is conserving heat.
A bird that is genuinely in trouble looks different: unable to stand, obviously injured, dragging a wing, or unresponsive when approached. That is a case for an injured bird and a licensed rehabilitator, not for a shoebox on the radiator. If a storm has brought down a nest, finding a baby bird covers what to do and what not to.
Turn off the porch light and close the curtains
During nocturnal migration, storms and low cloud push migrants down toward lit buildings. Killing outside lights on a bad night, and drawing curtains on lit rooms, costs nothing and reduces both disorientation and next-morning window strikes.
The first 48 hours after#
Work through this list once it is safe to be outside. The order matters more than the speed.
- Open water first, even a bowl on the ground. Snow-melt costs a bird body heat it does not have.
- Clear a bare patch of ground under one feeder and scatter seed on it.
- Clear ports, perches and trays, then fill every feeder to the top.
- Check for a frozen plug in tube bases and empty anything that got wet.
- Walk the yard for damage, then rehang what you took down, re-siting it near cover if the storm removed the cover it had.
- Look at the birds. Crowds after a storm are large and stressed, which is when disease spreads.
That last point is not a footnote. Storm aftermaths concentrate unusual numbers of birds at few food sources, the same mechanism behind winter salmonella outbreaks. If you see a lethargic, fluffed, slow-to-flush bird in the days afterward, read sick bird at my feeder before you keep refilling.
What a storm actually changes#
Keep the scale honest. Feeders reach a few individuals of a few species; a storm affects a landscape. Downed limbs, flooded ground and stripped berry crops matter more over the following month than any amount of sunflower seed.
What carries birds through severe weather is cover: dense evergreens, tangles, cavities and brush piles. A brush pile built from storm debris is the most useful thing you can do with the mess afterward, and it costs nothing but the decision not to bag it. If you lost a large limb or a whole tree, snags and dead wood makes the case for leaving what is safe to leave.
Feed generously after a storm because it helps at the margins, and because it is a decent thing to do. Just do not confuse it with rescue.
Frequently asked questions#
Should I put out extra food before a storm?
Yes. Fill everything to the brim the evening before, add a covered feeder if you have one, and scatter seed under a dense shrub or deck where it will stay dry and reachable. Birds feed heavily ahead of a front, so a full feeder that afternoon is used. Fill again as soon as the weather breaks.
Do birds need feeders to survive a blizzard?
No. North American feeder birds handled blizzards long before feeders existed, and they shelter in dense cover rather than feeding through the worst of it. A stocked feeder shortens the recovery for the individuals that find it, which is a real but modest benefit. It is not life support and it does not justify risking yourself.
Should I take my bird feeders down in a hurricane?
Take down hanging feeders, nectar feeders and anything on a shepherd's hook, and store them inside. In sustained wind above about 40 mph (65 km/h) a hanging feeder empties itself, breaks its hanger or becomes a projectile. A pole-mounted hopper on a deeply set pole can usually stay. Rehang as soon as it is safe to walk the yard.
How do I keep a bird bath from freezing without electricity?
Use a dark shallow plastic container, keep the water 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) deep, float a ball or stick to slow the ice, and refill with hot water twice a day. That buys hours, not days. Never add salt, glycerin or antifreeze: they poison birds or destroy feather insulation.
A bird is sheltering on my porch. Should I bring it inside?
No. A bird sitting still, alert and puffed up on a porch is doing the right thing and should be left alone with pets kept away. Indoor warmth and dry air make things worse, and releasing a warmed bird into freezing weather is dangerous. Only an obviously injured or unresponsive bird needs a licensed rehabilitator.
Is it worse for birds when snow melts and refreezes?
Often, yes. A melt-freeze cycle produces a crust or glaze that seals seed heads, bark and fallen food more completely than fresh snow, which birds can scratch through. Ice events tend to be harder on feeder birds than snowfall of the same depth, and the effect can last several days.