The Best Bird Feeders, According to Naturalists, Biologists, and Birders
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“Bird feeding is really more about people getting to see and enjoy the birds than it is about helping birds,” saidDavid Mizejewski, a naturalist and wildlife expert with the National Wildlife Federation and author ofAttracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife. You’re not trying to replace the food and habitat birds find naturally; you’re creating a reliable place for certain species to stop where you can actually watch them.
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There are a few things that will determine whether a feeder stays in regular use or eventually gets forgotten in the garage. If you know which birds you’re looking to attract, opt for the feeder best suited to their dining habits. Beyond that, it becomes all about how easy it is to clean, whether or not it offers solid weather and squirrel protection, and which materials it’s built from.
To find the best bird feeders for your yard, we spoke to birders, naturalists, conservationists, and other wildlife experts about what they hang outside their own homes, what they’ve learned from using different styles, and which features are worth paying attention to.
Our top picks
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The best bird feeder overall is well built, easy to fill and clean, and serves a variety of species.
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The best smart bird feeder has multiple cameras to give you the best angle on avian visitors.
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The best less-expensive feeder is versatile and pestproof without interfering with visiting birds.
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Choose the right feeder (and food) for the birds you want to see
There isn’t a single all-purpose feeder design, and choosing by shape alone is an easy way to end up attracting the wrong birds — or very few of them. An open tray accommodates a broad mix of birds and foods. A mesh tube filled with Nyjer works for smaller birds like finches. Hummingbird feeders are another thing entirely: They hold sugar water instead of seed and need to be cleaned much more often. And if squirrels have already discovered your yard, the feeder itself may need to do some defensive work.
For the broadest range of seed-eating birds, start with a platform feeder. The open design doesn’t funnel birds toward a few small ports or particular-size perches, so it can accommodate visitors of very different sizes.Kim Eierman, environmental horticulturist, ecological landscape designer, and founder of horticultural consultancyEcoBeneficial, likes platforms because they give “many different species of birds” easy access. That flexibility extends to what you put out, too. Mixed seed, sunflower seeds, peanuts, and other larger foods can all sit on an open tray rather than having to fit through a particular-size tube port. The tradeoff is exposure: Rain has easier access to the food and so do squirrels.
Tube feeders offer better weather protection. The seed sits inside an enclosed reservoir, and birds eat through individual openings around the sides.Alison Kondler, an Audubon master birder, naturalist, speaker, and creator ofBirding By Ear, prefers tubes in rainy or snowy conditions specifically because they do a better job of keeping seed dry. The size of the perches and feeding openings will help determine which birds can comfortably use one.
If it’s finches and siskins you’re looking to attract, you’ll need a Nyjer mesh feeder. Eierman prefers fine metal mesh over individual feeding ports because these small birds naturally cling while eating. Instead of six designated openings, almost the entire tube becomes a feeding space. Hummingbirds call for a different setup altogether. Instead of seed, you’re putting out sugar water, and you don’t want a big batch of it sitting around for days. If only a handful of hummingbirds regularly stop by, opt for a smaller feeder — there’s less nectar to replace.
Consider cleaning and drainage
“If your feeder isn’t easy to open and clean, it’s a waste of money,” saidSharon Stiteler, birder, author, speaker, and creator ofBirdchick. The first question Kondler asks? “Can you take it apart?” With a tube feeder, check whether you can reach all the way into the reservoir and around the feeding ports. Kondler is particularly diligent about cleaning tubes because multiple birds repeatedly put their heads into those same openings. With a platform feeder, look for a removable bottom rather than a wood frame permanently attached around a difficult-to-scrub screen.
Drainage is particularly important for seed feeders. An open tray should have mesh or perforations that let rain pass through. An enclosed tube provides more protection from above, but any water that gets inside still needs a route out rather than pooling beneath the seed.
Hummingbird feeders require their own standard. Since you’re dealing with sugar water, shallow reservoirs with large openings and few decorative crevices are substantially easier to wash thoroughly.
Play defense against squirrels
Weight-activated feeders work by making a visiting squirrel close the restaurant itself. Once a heavier animal climbs aboard, a spring-loaded section moves down and blocks access to the seed. A bird, however, can sit at the ports without affecting anything. More sophisticated versions allow you to change how much weight it takes to trigger that mechanism.
For a standard feeder, the material matters most at the points exposed to weather — and the teeth of non-avian visitors.
Mizejewski looks for metal around feeding ports, lids, bases, and perches because those are the places squirrels are most likely to chew. His own tube feeder combines heavy-duty acrylic with metal around those vulnerable areas, and some of the feeders he has maintained properly have lasted more than a decade.
Derek Sallmann, co-founder ofBadgerland Birdingand a birding educator and product reviewer, has seen the same issue become particularly expensive with smart feeders. Plenty of camera-equipped models are mostly plastic, and he has tested ones that squirrels can chew and raccoons can damage. Plastic can still make sense where weight, visibility, or easy molding are useful — Kondler’s hummingbird feeder is plastic and has survived years outside without fading or leaking.
For open platforms, Eierman prefers cedar over plastic because she wants to avoid introducing more plastic and eventual microplastics into the landscape.
Choose smarts for better close-ups
Look beyond the smarts and start with the physical design of the feeder.Holly Merker, professional birding guide, educator, and co-author ofOrnitherapy: For Your Mind, Body, and Soul, pays particular attention to the perch because it determines what birds can comfortably stop in front of the camera. Opt for one that has a wide, curved perch that attracts a broad variety of birds or several simultaneously.
Next is camera coverage. A single fixed lens can give you a perfectly good record of who visited; multiple lenses become useful when they actually provide different information. App reliability is at least as important as image resolution. A sharp camera isn’t much use if notifications arrive late, clips are difficult to retrieve, or the software routinely misidentifies what it sees. Look at how reliably the app connects, records, and saves visits and what features — including identification and storage — are available without a subscription.
The best bird feeder overall
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Type:Tube feeder |Feeding design:Multiple ports with cardinal ring perch |Standout feature:Adjustable weight-activated squirrel protection
The Squirrel Buster Plus solves the two most annoying parts of keeping a seed feeder: squirrels emptying it and you having to constantly refill it. Sallmann highlighted the Brome Plus for its large reservoir, chew-resistant construction, and, especially, its adjustable weight mechanism. When something heavy enough climbs aboard, the outer shroud drops over the feeding ports; you can “adjust the weight to whatever level you like,” he said, depending on which birds you want to let through. Most importantly, it’s effective: “It did work well for keeping squirrels off.”
Eierman uses hers for sunflower and similar seeds and said that its five-pound capacity means it “doesn’t have to be constantly refilled.” She also adds that the Brome Plus’s cardinal ring enables “many birds, including cardinals, to feed more easily.”
That’s what puts the Brome ahead of more specialized feeders. It doesn’t solve the squirrel problem by making the feeder awkward for birds or annoying for you. You get enough capacity to leave it alone for a while, room and feeding options for a range of common backyard birds, and squirrel protection that can be adjusted rather than simply accepted as one size fits all.
The best smart bird feeder
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Type:Smart feeder |Feeding design:Wide, curved perch |Standout feature:Dual-camera system with AI identification
Before you add Wi-Fi connectivity, AI identification, and multiple camera lenses, a smart bird feeder still has to function as, well, a dumb feeder. Merker’s praise for the Birdfy Feeder 2 Pro starts not with the app but with its wide, curved perch, which she said works “surprisingly well at attracting a wide variety of species, sometimes at the same time.” Plenty of camera feeders give a bird one narrow place to land, which can leave you paying a few hundred dollars for an excellent view of its tail end. The Birdfy gives birds room to move around in front of the camera, and then gives you two different ways to watch them. The standard Feeder 2 has a single 1080p front camera; the Pro adds a 2K portrait lens that tracks individual birds while the first lens keeps the wider feeder in frame. Merker called the dual-camera system “fantastic.”
The Pro sits between Birdfy’s standard Feeder 2 and the more expensive Duo. The standard model gives you one front-facing camera; the Pro adds a second lens devoted to closer, tracked views of individual birds. The Duo goes a step further with a third side camera. For most people, the Pro’s second perspective feels like the more meaningful upgrade: You get both a wider view of the feeder and close-ups of its visitors without paying extra for a third angle. It also comes with a solar panel, eliminating one of the more annoying parts of owning an outdoor camera — remembering to charge it.
The app covers the expected smart-feeder basics, including live viewing, arrival alerts, and automatically recorded clips, but the species identification is where Merker thinks Birdfy separates itself. She called its AI tools “as good as it gets.”
The best less-expensive squirrel-resistant bird feeder
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Type:Weight-activated feeder |Feeding design:U-shaped perches with multiple ports |Standout feature:Spring-loaded leaves cover ports under a squirrel’s weight
“My favorite low-cost, squirrel-resistant feeder is the Perky Pet Squirrel Be Gone,” Stiteler said. It’s not a recent discovery: The model was one of her most popular sellers when she ran a wild-bird-feeding store, and after losing another feeder to a squirrel or raccoon, it’s the one she bought for herself. She has since gifted it to friends. The U-shaped perch “makes it easier for larger cardinals and grosbeaks to feed.” The squirrel protection is charmingly low-tech: A spring-mounted metal cage surrounds the feeder, with decorative leaves positioned over the food ports. When a squirrel puts its weight on the cage, “the springs stretch bringing the metal leaves to cover the food portals,” Stiteler explained.
While most squirrel-resistant feeders seem to have been designed with considerably more thought given to the squirrel than the bird, here the deterrent stays out of the way until something heavy enough triggers it, while the broad perches make the feeder hospitable to some of the larger, more colorful backyard visitors.
The best less-expensive smart bird feeder
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Type:Smart feeder |Feeding design:Seed reservoir with camera |Standout feature:Durable metal body
“Many of the smart bird feeders are made of plastic and can be easily chewed by squirrels or destroyed by raccoons,” Sallmann said. The Soliom BF08 avoids that obvious weak point with a metal body, and that’s what first separated it from the cheaper smart feeders he’s tested.
For around $100, it still offers what most people are looking for from a smart feeder: a camera for close-up visits, a companion app, and a large seed reservoir. Sallmann said the app works “fairly well,” which is meaningful in a category where inexpensive hardware can be let down by clunky software.
He’s much less sold on the bird-identification features. After testing smart feeders across several brands, his assessment was that “none of the AI identification works great on any of them.” So there’s little reason to judge the BF08 by how convincingly it can name the bird in front of the lens — that’s up to you.
What you’re getting is a straightforward camera feeder in a tougher shell. The Birdfy above gives you a more sophisticated camera setup and stronger identification tools; the BF08 costs well under half as much and puts more emphasis on surviving the squirrels and raccoons that may arrive before the birds do.
The best hummingbird feeder
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Type:Nectar feeder |Feeding design:Saucer with top-facing ports and perches |Standout feature:Easy-clean four-ounce reservoir
Hummingbird feeders use nectar rather than seed. And because that sugar water needs to be changed regularly — more often in hot weather — capacity is less straightforward than it is with a seed feeder. Kondler has stuck with the four-ounce Mini HummBlossom for years. She gets a steady stream of hummingbirds, but not enough to justify keeping a large reservoir full, and she likes this one enough that she buys it for friends. “It doesn’t leak,” she said, and even after years outside, “it doesn’t fade in sunlight.”
The feeding ports are set into the top of the feeder, which helps keep bees and wasps out of the sugar water. There are perches, too, so hummingbirds can settle in while they drink instead of hovering. Kondler also likes the clear base: One glance tells her how much nectar is left and whether it’s time to replace it.
Cleaning is another reason she keeps using it. The shallow base is easy to get into, with none of the narrow bottlenecks or convoluted interior spaces that can make sugar residue difficult to scrub away. She recommends adding anant moatto any hummingbird feeder.
The best bird feeder for finches
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Type:Mesh tube feeder |Feeding design:Full mesh feeding surface |Standout feature:Removable base for cleaning
“For Nyjer seed, beloved by finches and siskins, I like feeders that have metal mesh tubes, not feeding portals,” Eierman said. With mesh, “birds can easily cling and eat” rather than jockeying for one of a handful of fixed openings. On this Aspects feeder, the fine mesh is tight enough to hold tiny Nyjer seed, but open enough that the birds can feed from almost anywhere along the tube. Since the feeder isn’t designed around a row of perches, it takes advantage of something finches and siskins already do well: hang onto a vertical surface while they eat. A busy group can spread itself around the feeder rather than each bird waiting its turn.
The bottom releases, so you can get directly into the tube and clear out the old seed and hulls that settle there — useful on a feeder Eierman expects to be cleaned regularly to help prevent the spread of disease.
The best platform bird feeder
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Type:Platform feeder |Feeding design:Open tray accessible from all sides |Standout feature:Cedar construction
The Nature’s Way Cedar Hanging Platform Feeder has almost no opinion about what kind of bird should land on it. That’s why Eierman uses it. An open tray accommodates birds of very different sizes and allows her to put out a wider mix of food than she could in a narrow tube. “A hanging cedar tray or platform feeder provides an opportunity for many different species of birds to easily eat,” she said.
Desirée Narango, conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, similarly favors flat platforms for larger birds, noting that more hesitant species such as evening grosbeaks readily use them. So if the goal is variety rather than targeting one particular seedeater, a platform is a sensible place to start.
Eierman also likes that Nature’s Way builds this one from cedar rather than plastic. For something that’s going to spend its life hanging outdoors, she’d rather use a natural material than add another piece of plastic — and, eventually, more microplastics — to the landscape.
All that openness comes with a few tradeoffs. Rain has an easier path to the food than it would in a tube, so good drainage matters. Squirrels can also stroll right onto the tray with very little resistance.
The best tube bird feeder
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Type:Tube feeder |Feeding design:Shallow feeding ports |Standout feature:Enclosed metal body protects seed from weather
The main advantage of a tube feeder: It keeps seed better protected from rain and snow than an open tray. The Perky-Pet Blue Metal Tube does that, sure, but what sold Kondler on this particular model is that it doesn’t create as much of a cleaning headache in return. With many tube feeders, birds have to push their heads well into the same small openings over and over again — one reason Kondler is especially vigilant about keeping them clean. The Perky-Pet’s ports are shallower. Birds “can’t stick their heads in too far,” she said, while the enclosed tube still “protects the seed from rain and snow.” The feeder also comes apart where you need it to. The base and perches are removable, giving you better access to the areas birds touch most often and making it easier to wash the feeder thoroughly and let it dry before refilling.
The metal construction also adds some durability in a category full of inexpensive plastic tubes, especially if squirrels are likely to investigate. Kondler gave it one final point in its favor: “Plus it’s cute.”
Our experts
•Kim Eierman, environmental horticulturist, ecological landscape designer specializing in native plants, and founder of horitcultural consultancyEcoBeneficial
•Alison Kondler, Audubon master birder, naturalist, speaker, and creator of birding audio siteBirding By Ear
•Holly Merker, owner of nature-based wellness resourceOrnitherapy, professional birding guide, educator, and co-author ofOrnitherapy: For Your Mind, Body, and Soul
•David Mizejewski, naturalist and wildlife expert with the National Wildlife Federation and author ofAttracting Birds, Butterflies, and Other Backyard Wildlife
•Desirée Narango, conservation biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies
•Derek Sallmann, co-founder ofBadgerland Birdingtours and a birding educator and product reviewer
•Sharon Stiteler, birder, author, speaker, and creator ofBirdchick
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