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One feeder, one seed, one good position. Get these three right and you will have birds within a fortnight. Everything else on this site is refinement.

Feeding birds is not complicated, but almost everyone makes the same three mistakes at the start: the wrong seed, the wrong position, and giving up in week two. This page walks you past all three.

If you do nothing else, do this: one tube or hopper feeder, filled with black oil sunflower seed, on a pole about 5 feet (1.5 m) high, roughly 10 feet (3 m) from a shrub or tree. That setup works in almost every yard in North America.

Step 1: Buy one feeder, not four#

Resist the starter kit. A single well-chosen feeder teaches you what your yard actually has in it, and you can add specialists later once you know.

Whatever you buy, check two things: the ports have metal collars (squirrels chew plastic open in a season) and the base comes off without tools so you can clean it. Those two features matter more than price. The full reasoning is in how to choose a bird feeder.

Step 2: Buy one bag of black oil sunflower#

Not a mix. Black oil sunflower is the closest thing to a universal bird food in North America: cardinals, chickadees, finches, nuthatches, titmice, jays, grosbeaks and woodpeckers all take it.

Cheap supermarket mixes are mostly milo, wheat and cracked corn. Most feeder birds cannot digest those well, so they rake them out to reach the few sunflower seeds, and the rest rots on the ground under your feeder. You will pay less per pound and far more per bird. That argument in full is in reading a bird seed label.

Buy a bag you will get through in about a month, and store it sealed and cool. Stale seed is the most common reason a full feeder sits untouched.

Step 3: Position it properly#

This is the step people skip and then wonder why nothing comes. Three distances matter.

About 10 to 12 feet (3 to 3.5 m) from cover. Birds will not sit in the open with no escape route. A shrub, a hedge or a low branch within a short dash makes a feeder feel safe. Much closer than that and a cat can ambush from inside the cover.

Either under 3 feet (1 m) or over 30 feet (9 m) from a window. This sounds backwards and is not: very close to the glass, a startled bird cannot build up enough speed to injure itself, and far away it is unlikely to mistake a reflection for open sky. The distances in between are the ones that kill birds. Feeders and windows explains it properly, and it is worth five minutes of your time.

5 feet (1.5 m) up, 10 feet (3 m) from any launch point. Squirrels jump further than you think: roughly 10 feet horizontally and 5 feet vertically from a standing start. Fences, railings, roof edges and overhanging branches are all launch points. Put a baffle on the pole beneath the feeder and you have solved the problem before it starts.

And one non-technical rule: put it where you will actually see it. A feeder you cannot watch from a chair is a feeder you stop refilling in February.

Step 4: Wait, and resist the urge to fiddle#

Here is the realistic timeline.

Moving a feeder resets this clock, so pick a position carefully and then leave it alone for a month. If four weeks pass with nothing at all, work through why are no birds coming to my feeder, which goes through the causes in order of likelihood.

Step 5: Clean it, from the beginning#

Feeders concentrate birds, and concentrated birds pass diseases to each other. This is the part of bird feeding with an actual ethical obligation attached.

Every two weeks: take the feeder down, empty it, wash it in hot soapy water with a brush, soak it in a solution of 1 part household bleach to 9 parts water for about 10 minutes, rinse thoroughly, and let it dry completely before refilling. Damp seed molds.

If you see a bird that looks sick, lethargic, or has crusted or swollen eyes, take the feeder down for two weeks and clean it. Details in how to clean a bird feeder and safe disinfectants.

Step 6: Add water before you add a second feeder#

The highest-return upgrade after your first feeder is not another feeder. It is a shallow dish of water.

Every bird drinks and bathes, including species that will never touch seed: warblers, thrushes, vireos, robins. A bird bath about 2 inches (5 cm) deep at the center, with a rough surface for grip, will bring in birds a feeder cannot. Add moving water (even a slow drip from a bucket) and the effect roughly doubles. In winter, open water is often scarcer than food.

What to add next, in order#

Once the first feeder is emptying in about a week, expand in this sequence:

1. A suet feeder for woodpeckers, nuthatches and wrens. The single biggest jump in species variety you can buy.
2. A platform or ground feeder for juncos, doves, sparrows and towhees, which will not use a tube.
3. A nyjer feeder if you want goldfinches, which need both a specific seed and a specific feeder.
4. A hummingbird feeder in spring, timed to your region's arrival dates.
5. Native plants and cover, which is where the real long-term gains are. A yard with brush piles and native shrubs supports birds a feeder alone never will.

Your first shopping list#

• One tube or hopper feeder with metal ports and a removable base
• One smooth metal pole with a baffle
• One bag of black oil sunflower seed, a month's worth
• One sealed container to store the seed in
• One shallow bird bath
• A bottle brush and household bleach for cleaning

That is the whole setup. When you are ready to go deeper, the full topic index has everything else, or start with where to hang a bird feeder and how to stop squirrels, which are the two questions almost everyone asks second.