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After spending 20 hours researching bird feeders, browsing through hundreds of options, and talking to five experts (including the man who wrote the National Audubon Society’s guide to bird feeding in North America), we recommend the Droll Yankees 18-Inch Onyx Mixed Seed Tube Bird Feeder with Removable Base as the best all-around bird feeder for most people.

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Of all the models we tested, the Onyx was the sturdiest and best-built bird feeder we came across. It has tough metal components that secure tightly to the body of the feeder. The Onyx is also versatile enough to hold several different feed types and comes backed by a lifetime guarantee against squirrel damage. Most important, in including a removable base for easy cleaning and roomy perches, Droll Yankees has designed it with a bird’s health in mind. We tested both the 18-inch and 15-inch versions of Droll Yankees’s full seed feeder. We think most people should pay extra for the larger version, as we like how the removable base makes cleaning easier. But if it’s unavailable, you won’t regret choosing the smaller feeder.

If you want to see the fullest variety of birds in your outdoor space, you need a few different feeders. If I could have a full quiver of bird feeders to ensure the widest avian population in my garden, I’d also include the following three.

If you want to draw finches, we recommend the Droll Yankees Onyx Clever Clean Finch Magnet. It’s part of the same line as our top pick, but instead of perches it has diamond-shaped mesh for finches to grab hold of and peck through.

For a simple nectar feeder, it’s hard to beat the Aspects 367 HummZinger Ultra. It’s usually under $20, and it comes extremely well-reviewed. A built-in ant moat keeps those critters out. The HummZinger is made of two plastic halves that come apart easily but are strong enough together to create a solid bird feeder. The easy disassembly also makes this model extremely easy to clean. Reviewers give it high marks for its moat and its slim feeder-port design, which together help to keep ants and wasps away from the syrup inside. In our tests, the HummZinger was easy to fill and simple to maintain. It also comes with a lifetime warranty.

For high-calorie winter feeding, we recommend the Wild Birds Unlimited EcoTough Tail Prop Suet Feeder. This feeder is made from strong post-consumer plastic (recycled milk jugs). Although cheaper suet feeders are available, we liked the EcoTough’s built-in tail prop, which allows birds such as woodpeckers to feed in a more natural manner.

Everything we recommend

Why you should trust us

I once spent six months living in a tent in a tree in Hawaii feeding birds from commercial and homemade bird feeders. On top of that, I have spent years cleaning, filling, and watching my parent’s own feeders in Upstate New York. But that wouldn’t necessarily make me an expert.

The world of ornithology is huge. To really understand this topic, I spoke with as many experts as possible, most notably: Stephen W. Kress, executive director of the Seabird Restoration Program and vice president for bird conservation of the National Audubon Society, and author of several books on birding, including National Audubon Society Birder’s Handbook and National Audubon Society The Bird Garden; Emma Greig of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and project leader for Cornell’s massive Project FeederWatch, which collects and studies survey data of birds that visit backyard feeders across North America; Liz Gordon, head of the Birders’ Exchange for the American Birding Association; and Nancy Castillo, lifelong birding enthusiast and writer of the blog The Zen Birdfeeder, as well as a Wild Birds Unlimited franchise holder.

In the bird-feeding world, the experts are also often the manufacturers themselves. In addition to the experts above, I conducted several in-depth conversations with Christen Brewer, designer and marketing coordinator for Droll Yankees, and Margaret Collins, media manager for Wild Birds Unlimited, in order to get a better understanding of the bird feeders themselves.

Who this is for

In truth, there is no actual need to buy a dedicated bird feeder. You can feed many birds just by laying a bunch of seed on the ground or spreading some homemade bark butter onto a tree and waiting to see what shows up. But if you want to at least try to avoid supplementing the diet of other animals (like squirrels) with your expensive sunflower mix, or if you want to keep things a bit tidier in your yard, a bird feeder will do the job.

In 2011, more than 50 million Americans over the age of 16 reported (PDF) that they fed wild birds regularly. Because of the popularity of bird feeding, hundreds of bird feeders are available in many different configurations. With so many factors to take into account—bird type, feed type, squirrel-foiling options, size, time of year, region, feeder placement—it was a challenge for us to come up with a single recommendation that would fit everyone’s needs. Because there are a few other situations outside of what our main pick is appropriate for, we also have a couple of additional options depending on the kind of birdwatching you hope to do.

Bird feeders can both protect your bird feed and provide birds with an easy source of food during tough winters and long migration periods. They also give people a chance to participate in programs such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s FeederWatch, which brings scientists and citizens together in nationwide conservation and tracking efforts. In the Audubon Society’s Birds and Climate Change Report, bird feeding is listed as one of the bulwarks against bird habitat loss. Most important, feeding and viewing a bird can be beautiful and restorative, especially when done responsibly.

If you’re just using and filling a cute feeder you picked up at the thrift store, consider upgrading to one of our picks for the birds’ well-being.

How we picked and tested

There is no “best” bird feeder. But there are many ideal bird feeders for different situations and regions. A good bird feeder should be tough enough to withstand all four seasons and the tactics of other animals interested in the seed, such as squirrels. And a good bird feeder should be tight enough to keep the seed dry while also being easy to disassemble, clean, and refill. To attract the greatest variety of birds to your home, it’s best to offer a variety of feeder types with different high-grade feeds.

You can find an overwhelming number of general bird feeders of all types and sizes. We knew going into this guide that we would never be able to test and look at every single model. Unfortunately, there is very little independent research on bird feeders, despite the popularity of the hobby.

There is no “best” bird feeder. But there are many ideal bird feeders for different situations and regions.

After talking to experts, we decided to look at feeders designed specifically for the four most common types of feed.

Seed feeders: These feeders are the most common and usually come in a tube design with large open ports for medium- to large-size seeds, or encased in a wire mesh cage or sock for nyjer (thistle) seed. The tube shape allows the most flexibility for the type of feed, while also attracting the widest variety of birds to a single feeder. Sunflower-seed tube feeders are very popular and usually come with four to six perches. “Black oil sunflower seeds attract more kinds of birds than any other single food,” said Stephen W. Kress, vice president of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society and author of National Audubon Society North American Birdfeeder Guide.

Nectar feeders: These feeders are often red in color and serve primarily to attract hummingbirds. The glass or plastic reservoirs have small built-in ports to provide access to simple syrup. Because sweet nectar is also attractive to bugs, it’s important to be aware of bees and ants when considering the design and placement of your nectar feeder. Some nectar feeders come with helpful ant moats and bee guards.

Suet feeders: Suet is often made from rendered animal fat and can be an important source of calories for accelerated avian metabolisms. You can produce it at home. However, most store-bought bird-feed suet is perfectly suitable and often comes formulated with extra ingredients such as seeds, insects, and dry fruit. You can also find melt-resistant recipes for use in summer. Suet feeders are often the simplest of all feeders, with just a metal cage for the food.

Fruit and berry feeders: These models are also referred to as tray feeders. You lay out fresh and dried fruits and berries in a covered receptacle or tray for birds such as orioles to land on and enjoy. Like suet feeders, fruit and berry feeders require minimal maintenance but have no protection from precipitation.

Most experts agreed that the simpler a bird feeder was to clean, the better it would be for both the birds and the owners.

Our experts overwhelmingly recommended the sunflower-seed tube feeder for most beginners. Invented by Droll Yankees in 1969, tube feeders usually consist of a plastic or acrylic tube capped on each end by a tough plastic or metal base and lid. They’re robust and fairly easy to maintain.

Nancy Castillo, a member of the American Birding Association and longtime owner of a Wild Birds Unlimited franchise, said, “A tube feeder is compact, it keeps food safe in bad weather, and can hold different blends for different birds. And it can be easily cleaned if there is a removable base. You’re going to enjoy the hobby more if your bird feeder is easy to maintain.”

You need to keep a bird feeder tidy in order to minimize bacterial growth, so we looked for models that were easy to clean. Most experts we spoke to agreed that the simpler a bird feeder was to clean, the better it would be for both the birds and the owners. (The two most commonly spread diseases are salmonella, which can spread when seed comes into contact with bird feces, and avian conjunctivitis, which passes between birds as they rub against the same surfaces.) A removable base—the only feature universally recommended by every expert we spoke to—can facilitate regular cleaning. Better models have a cone-shaped bottom that feeds the last seeds to the lowest feeder ports so that the birds can clean out a feeder themselves.

Our experts overwhelmingly recommended the sunflower-seed tube feeder for most beginners.

Top models have smooth metal components lining any openings (such as the feeder ports), both to protect birds and to thwart squirrels. Likewise, a well-fitting, secure lid can keep squirrels and rodents from gnawing their way into the feeder or lifting the lid from the feeder itself.

For our initial testing we talked to experts about cleaning habits, design considerations, and what they looked for in a good bird feeder. To narrow things down a bit further, we researched the most reputable brands we could while also considering online reviews and hobby blogs. The three brands we focused on were Wild Birds Unlimited, Aspects (which also manufactures some of Wild Birds Unlimited’s exclusive models), and Droll Yankees. We picked these companies for their reputation, quality, and ability to provide verifiable guarantees on their feeders.

After talking to the experts, we reduced the field to the top 10 contenders and called them in to compare the build quality. The sturdier a bird feeder felt, the higher the marks we gave it. We filled and cleaned our bird feeders many times each to find the rhythm and flow of that task. We found that our interviewed experts were right: Having a removable bottom made a huge difference in the ease and enjoyment of this task and probably increased the likelihood that we would clean our bird feeders the recommended four times a year.

We also read as many owner reviews as possible, on company websites and Amazon, to see if there were any larger customer concerns that we had missed.

Our pick: Droll Yankees 18-inch Onyx Mixed Seed Tube Bird Feeder

If you get only one bird feeder, choose the Droll Yankees 18-inch Onyx Mixed Seed Tube Bird Feeder with Removable Base. What sets the Onyx feeder apart from the competition is its superior construction. Even compared with the nearest runner-up in our tests, the Wild Birds Unlimited EcoClean, the Onyx stood out for its individual pieces’ strength and rigidity. When we had it all put together and filled with seed, the Onyx was the most solid, rattle-free tube bird feeder we tested. That’s an important distinction for a product that is essentially a plastic tube with a removable base and cap. What you don’t want—and what we saw in much of the competition—is for those individual pieces to feel loose or flimsy. Loose construction can mean small gaps, which can collect bacteria, amass dirt, or give purchase for hungry squirrels.

The Onyx’s base is simple to remove, with a secure, half-turn locking mechanism. All the components except for the tube itself are made of metal, and the lid sits very snugly on top of the tube. We found that 18 inches was a great height, allowing the Onyx to hold about 5 cups of seed, about a pound more than the 15-inch model can hold.

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Depending on the type of feed you use, the Onyx can attract and support a wide variety of avian species, including “cardinals, chickadees, finches, flickers, goldfinches, grackles, grosbeaks, jays, juncos, kinglets, nuthatches, redpolls, siskins, sparrows, starlings, titmice, towhees, woodpeckers and wrens,” according to Droll Yankees. This would be true of any tube feeder, though, and depends largely on your area and the feed.

If you don’t want to use sunflower seeds, the Onyx is flexible enough to hold different types of feed. The ports of the Onyx are large enough for a mix with small sunflower kernels or larger peanut chunks.

Unique to the Onyx are its four atypical feeder perches, set on two tiers on opposite sides. These perches are not built the way you might customarily imagine, as a stem jutting perpendicular from the tube feeder itself. Instead, they are aligned horizontally to the feeder port like large soda can tabs. What this design does is offer more surface area for larger birds to perch on and feed from.

Small design considerations make this feeder feel more secure than similar models we brought in. For instance, the lid of the Onyx has a slightly longer rim, and a small inner ridge helps secure the top snugly to the feeder tube. The bailing-wire hanging loop is fixed through the body of the feeder rather than cinched around a through-bar as with other models. And the removable base twists into a locked position, requiring fewer moving parts than the Wild Birds Unlimited EcoClean.

The Onyx, like almost all Droll Yankees tube feeders, comes equipped with two mounting options: a stainless steel bailing-wire loop at the top for hanging from a pole arm, or a threaded base mount at the bottom, which you can attach to the Droll Yankees Threaded Pole Adapter. Droll Yankees also makes pole systems that you can configure in a variety of ways.

According to the Droll Yankees website, all of the company’s models come with a lifetime warranty against squirrel damage and even against some bear and raccoon damage. However, the policy includes many caveats: “This warranty does not extend to damage through improper use, improper cleaning, weather, neglect, abuse, modification, disassembly, or falls whether of an accidental, weather, or squirrel related cause.”

Runner-up: Droll Yankees 15-inch Sunflower Tube Feeder

If the 18-inch Droll Yankees model seems like too much of a financial commitment for a single bird feeder, the company also makes a nice entry-level model. The Droll Yankees 15-inch Sunflower Tube Feeder comes with the same lifetime guarantee and sturdy metal ports (though without the horizontal alignment) but lacks a removable base and holds about 1½ cups less seed than our top pick.

It’s a well-made feeder, but with a smaller diameter and overall seed capacity than the 18-inch Onyx, this model will require far more refills every week. And without a removable base, regular maintenance quickly becomes annoying and difficult to do well.

For finches: Droll Yankees Onyx Clever Clean Finch Magnet

The Droll Yankees Onyx Clever Clean Finch Magnet is part of the same line as our top pick; it has the same heavy metal lid and secure twist-lock base. The major difference is that the cylinder is made from a diamond-shaped metal mesh cage instead of plastic. This small mesh pattern is meant to mimic the shape of finch beaks, making it easier for those birds to feed from. Although you can find many other nyjer seed feeders, the other typical models usually have small feeder ports and perches. Nyjer feed socks are another popular and cheap option, but they need to be replaced far more frequently than an actual feeder, which seems a waste.

For hummingbirds: Aspects 367 HummZinger Ultra

The Aspects 367 HummZinger Ultra is a great hummingbird feeder. It’s cheap, it comes extremely well-reviewed, and according to our own tests, it’s easy to take care of. It includes an ant moat, and the feeder ports are small enough to protect the simple syrup feed from bees. Also, the perches are spaced properly to allow a hummingbird to feed while resting. The one complaint we’ve read is that in some areas orioles can overwhelm these nectar feeders.

Other models we looked at all seemed very similar in design to the HummZinger, though many online comments suggest that their perches aren’t designed well enough for hummingbirds to both land and eat.

For winter feeding: Wild Birds Unlimited EcoTough Tail Prop Suet Feeder

The Wild Birds Unlimited EcoTough Tail Prop Suet Feeder is made from recycled milk jugs. The lid doesn’t lock down, so it is easy to take apart and maintain. Unlike suet cage designs, this suet feeder also comes with a tail prop for larger birds such as woodpeckers, which allows them to brace themselves with their tails as they eat. You can find imitations of this model, but Wild Birds Unlimited has a strong reputation and offers a lifetime guarantee if its recycled-plastic models warp, fade, or crack. The company also offers part replacements if a feeder becomes nonfunctional due to squirrel damage.

A bit about bird feed

The second most important consideration after buying a bird feeder is what you’ll put inside of it. The most recommended feed for bird feeding is overwhelmingly sunflower seed, specifically black oil sunflower seed. Sunflower seeds generally attract the widest variety of birds, and black oil seeds have thin shells, which are easy for all birds to crack open. The kernels of black oil seeds also have high fat content, which makes them a good winter feed. Striped sunflower seeds, in contrast, have a slightly harder shell, which can make them difficult for birds like house sparrows and blackbirds to eat.

You can find sunflower seeds packed both shelled and unshelled. Shelled seeds can be more economical per pound, since you aren’t paying for discarded shell weight, and any scraps on the ground will quickly get eaten. However, without their shells, sunflower seeds can quickly degrade outdoors and breed dangerous bacteria and mold. If you’re using shelled sunflower seeds, the recommendation is to clear the feed out once every two days, which is a lot of turnover.

“Besides having a feeder that’s simple and easy to clean, fresh seeds are very important,” said Emma Greig, project leader of the FeederWatch program for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Old seed and dirty feeders can lead to mold and spread diseases to bird populations, which can become a problem very quickly.”

You’re best off buying a pure-seed bag without filler if you can. Inexpensive mixtures can be loaded with filler like golden millet, red millet seed, oats, cracked corn, and flax; if the birds in your area ignore those ingredients (a very likely outcome with golden and red millet seed), they can sit in your feeder for too long and become ripe for bacteria growth.

What to do about squirrels (if you can)

The adversaries of bird feeders everywhere, squirrels are inventive and generally as cunning as they are tenacious. Given a chance and enough time, they will eat through, shake loose, take apart, or otherwise destroy your bird feeder while trying to consume the feed inside. You have two meaningful strategies to defend against this perennial menace: appeasement or isolation.

Appeasement comes in the form of feeding the squirrels yourself with something cheaper than bird feed. Ears of corn are common; so are peanuts. As opportunistic feeders, squirrels will eat whatever food is most readily available. This tactic works because squirrels are highly territorial: A well-fed squirrel will end up protecting your garden from other squirrels. It’s basically a protection racket.

Isolating your bird feeders is all about good tactics. Squirrels can jump horizontally as high as 8 feet from the ground and can leap horizontally approximately 5 feet in any direction, so you need to position your bird feeder with that in mind. Usually the best setup involves a multi-hook bird-feeder pole, similar to this model, that stands 30 feet from your house and keeps your feeders more than 8 feet off the ground and farther than 5 feet from any tree limbs (adjusting for the height of the tree limbs as required).

Additionally, if your bird-feeder stand isn’t equipped with a squirrel baffle, adding a good one will help protect against squirrels running up the pole from the ground.

Is it right to feed birds at all?

According to the experts we spoke to, the benefits of the hobby far outweigh the negatives. But feeding birds is not without controversy. In 2002, James P. Sterba of The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) wrote a controversial article (“controversial” in the bird-feeding world, anyway) that called into question whether feeding birds was the right thing to do at all. He argued that bird feeding had become a $3 billion industry (the most current estimates value it at closer to $4.5 billion), and that it might be doing more harm than good to the environment.

“Attracting wild birds to feeders spreads disease, aids predators such as house cats, and lures the birds close to houses and roads where tens of millions of them fly into windows and cars,” wrote Sterba. “House cats and hawks treat feeders as fast-food outlets, snatching birds from perches or the ground below.”

His most compelling argument was that bird feeding was promoted for the profit of an industry and inevitably favored one avian population over another.

In letters to The Wall Street Journal, the scientific community pushed back. John W. Fitzpatrick, PhD, director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and president-emeritus of the American Ornithologists’ Union, wrote: “Although he quoted figures from the Cornell studies of backyard bird mortality, Mr. Sterba missed two crucial point[s] repeatedly emphasized by the principal author of those studies (Dr. Erica Dunn, now at the Canadian Wildlife Service, and widely considered to be among North America’s leading experts on bird population biology): ‘…bird feeding is not having a broad-scale negative impact on bird populations’ and ‘…bird feeding does not cause mortality to rise above natural levels through exposing birds to unusual danger from window collisions, disease, or predation.’”

Feeding birds does have an effect, though. A study by T. E. Martin in the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics from 1987 and an article by Gillian N. Robb, Robbie A. McDonald, Dan E. Chamberlain, and Stuart Bearhop published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment in 2008 both said that birds supplied with extra food had a greatly enhanced chance for survival in winter, and that this supplementation very often led to improved reproduction rates for laying, hatching, and re-nesting.

Of course, feeding doesn’t have to come from a hanging bird feeder. “As these papers point out, there is much yet to learn about supplemental feeding and its effect on birds,” said Stephen W. Kress, vice president of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society. He noted in our interview that plenty of water, migratory, or insect-eating birds won’t come to feeders, but that “the value of feeding should be qualified and seen as a part of a more comprehensive backyard plan that involves planting native plants in ways that mimic natural habitats.”

Emma Greig, project leader of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology FeederWatch program, told us, “Most of the studies aren’t really assessing the consequences of large-scale winter seed feeding, so it isn’t accurate to say that such feeding practices often enhance reproduction (there aren’t enough studies to say ‘often’). Honestly, there is no single or simple answer to how winter bird feeding impacts populations: it has the potential to impact different species in different ways, and have both direct or indirect effects on populations.”

One important benefit to consider is that feeding birds does bring them into view, and allows people to keep track of their changing populations. So even if feeding doesn’t affect bird populations, it does give researchers the opportunity to see what is happening to them through programs like Project FeederWatch, which can offer tremendous benefit.

“Overall,” concluded Greig, “if you were to list all the pros and potential cons, I would say that our current state of knowledge would lead us to conclude that feeding birds in most locations and in most situations is more beneficial than it is harmful.”

Care and maintenance

Old seed can become a breeding ground for mold and bacteria. “Clean your feeders about once every two weeks, and more often during times of heavy use or wet weather… To clean your feeder, take it apart and use a dishwasher on a hot setting or hand wash either with soap and boiling water or with a dilute bleach solution,” says the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. When refilling the bird feeder, always empty out the seed at the bottom of the tube first. Cleaning feeders thoroughly with a solution of nine parts water to one part chlorine bleach or a 50-50 solution of white vinegar and water four times a year can reduce the risk of their spreading diseases any further.

As a rule, for the well-being of birds, you should place feeders either within 3 feet of a window, ideally directly on a windowsill, or 30 feet away from a window to avoid window strikes.

While accurately measuring the number of window strikes a year across the country is admittedly difficult, in a study reported on by The Washington Post, ornithologists have estimated that window strikes kill anywhere from 365 million to 988 million birds in the United States every year. That measure puts windows somewhere just behind domesticated cats, which reportedly kill 1.3 billion to 4 billion birds a year (subscription required).

For more on concerns involving bird feeding, check out the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s excellent Problems and Solutions pages.

The competition

We called in a few other feeders that we didn’t like as much as our picks.

The Wild Birds Unlimited EcoClean Mesh Finch Feeder, the Wild Birds Unlimited EcoClean Large Seed Tube Feeder, and the Aspects 393 Large Quick-Clean Seed Tube Feeder are all part of the same line, which means they all come with the same issues. They’re good bird feeders but slightly less well-built than the Droll Yankees models.

The Droll Yankees American Bird Finch Feeder is made of a plastic tube with perches. For finches, a wire cage feeder that allows the birds to feed from any spot is better. This model also lacks a removable base.

The Perky-Pet Window Feeder is well-reviewed on Amazon, but we’re not sure why. We had trouble getting the suction cups to stick well to our window, and the all-plastic construction and open access seemed ripe for squirrel attack. Perky-Pet has three other brands under its umbrella—Birdscapes, Avant Garden, and Garden Song—that more or less fit the same profile. These bird feeders seem to be designed with the owner in mind first and a bird’s health second.

PhantomStrider heavily praises Avatar: The Last Airbender for its beautiful animation/visuals, emotionally touching/mature subjects, interesting characters and its wonderful stories.

Bird feeders like the Perky-Pet Copper Panorama Feeder, while cheap in price, are also cheap in quality, without any of the features our experts recommended to us. Perky-Pet models also do not come with the same lifetime guarantees that most of their competitors offer. In the case of bird feeders, a maker’s willingness (or unwillingness) to stand behind its product speaks volumes.

The Kaytee Finch Station package was probably the best of all the “permanent” finch feeding sock stations we saw. However, we preferred the durability of a metal mesh feeder over buying and refilling disposable socks every few weeks.

Brome, the company of choice for squirrelproof bird feeders, also produces the Eliminator and Fundamentals squirrelproof bird feeders for Wild Birds Unlimited. The experts we talked to all agreed that nothing could be 100 percent squirrelproof, though, and we couldn’t justify spending extra money on a squirrelproof feeder without a guarantee that it would work. Brome feeders are in a similar price range as Droll Yankees models—for instance, this Brome model holds roughly the same amount of seed and comes with wide perches—but the focus on squirrel protection also prohibits other expert-recommended features, such as a quick-remove base and a simple design built for easy cleaning.

Duncraft both sells under license and produces its own assortment of bird feeders. The company seems to specialize, though, in producing metal-enclosed exclusionary feeders and suet feeders of every variety. The Duncraft Metal Haven Feeder, for instance, holds roughly the same amount of seed as our top pick but is more expensive and designed more specifically to exclude certain birds than it is to be an all-around convenient feeder. During our research, we found that the models Duncraft sold exclusively seemed too advanced for the average first-time buyer or lacked specific features, such as removable bottoms, that we were looking for in our top picks.

Sources

1. James P. Sterba, American Backyard Feeders May Do Harm to Wild Birds, The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 2002

2. Responses to the WSJ Article, Wild Bird Feeding Industry

3. T.E. Martin, Food as a Limit on Breeding Birds: A Life-History Perspective, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, November 1, 1987

4. Gillian N. Robb, Robbie A. McDonald, Dan E. Chamberlain, Stuart Bearhop, Food for thought: supplementary feeding as a driver of ecological change in avian populations, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, November 1, 2008

5. How To Choose The Right Kind Of Bird Feeder, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, April 20, 2009

6. Susan Milius and Science News, Stop blaming cats: As many as 988 million birds die annually in window collisions, The Washington Post, February 3, 2014

7. Susan Milius, Cats kill more than one billion birds each year, Science News, January 29, 2013

8. U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (PDF)

Further reading

• Inner Vision for the Weekend of June 19, 2015

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