Basic backyard bird feeder guide

Do you want to watch wildlife from the comfort of your own backyard? Adding one or two bird feeders will be helpful to attract more wild birds to your garden. And It’s enjoyable and relaxing to watch birds while learning a variety of bird species in your backyard. Bird feeders are the must addition to any landscape that allows you to do so. Because there’re many types of bird feeders on the market, with very different outlook design, and materials, etc, including Tray, Hopper, Hummingbird, Suet and Tube.

Before choosing the right feeder, you need to know certain thing. What species live your area, what’s the climate that you have, is it rainy most of the day? How often will you be able to refill the feeder?

Bird feeding is exciting and fun in your garden. There’re few basic bird feeders on the market, like tray, hopper, hummingbird, ground, suet.

Tray bird feeder:

Tray feeder is more like a serving tray, or a plate with raised edge, which is with great viewing space that easy to attract birds. It’s non-exclusive feeder, open to all kind of wild life, and very easy to get notice by birds. As it’s open to weather, which will be easy rot the seed. Adding a roof on top of it will be helpful to protect the bird seed. Tray feeders can be mounted on a poe or placed several inches from the ground. Tray feeder is exposed to the weather and other wildlife, such as rats, squirrels.

Hopper Bird feeder:

Hopper bird feeder is often referred as bird house, with various styles, including a look of lanterms, carriage lights,  which is non-exclusive to large birds or small birds. It’s capable to hold large quantity of bird seed. It’s available in various durable materials, like wood, copper, etc. The various styles of hopper bird feeders make them excellent garden decoration as well as being functional. Hopper feeder refill from the top and you can check the seed level from the clear plastic sides.

Ground bird feeder:

Ground bird feeder, or platform bird feeder, is mostly for large birds. It usually put a few inch above the ground. Before getting a ground bird feeder, you need to make sure there’s no bird predators in your yard or your neighbors’.

Suet Bird feeder:

Suet bird feeder is for the birds of the tree zone, which is usually placed on or near a tree or a large branch with nail or cup hook. Suet feeder is intended to hang freely from a tree branch. Not all birds eat seed, like woodpeckers, hatches. By adding a suet feeder, you will attract non-seed eating birds. Unused suet should be kept in the freezer for freshness. Suet bird feeders with black peppers will be helpful to discourage squirrels, but birds love it.

Hummingbird feeder:

Hummingbirds are instinctively attracted to red, so please make sure you’re having a red feeder. The nectar feeder should be hang away from seed feeders, and please always provide fresh nectar with it. Providing the boiled water will be helpful to remove impurities and to dissolve the sugar.

Humming birds love small insect and nectar. If you have humming bird around and would like to attract them, you need a hummingbird feeder.

Tube Bird feeder:

Tube, as its name indicates, are a tube or tubes clear plastic that have at least two ports with perches for birds to access the seed. These feeders primarily attract smaller birds. Most tube feeders fill from the top and will allow you to use mixed seeds.

Different types of birds prefer various of seeds, but a large variety of them love black-oil sunflower seeds. Tube bird seeders are very easy to hang from a tree limb or can be placed on a post.

The above six types of bird feeders are the basic feeders that you would like to put in your backyard. You might want to get at least two types of feeders in your yard to attract various birds. If you want to make the bird watching more comfortable, you might want to have a smart bird feeder, which will notify you of each bird stops by, capture pictures and videos, remote control the cam with you phone’s app.