The Carolina Wren is one of the few backyard birds whose population and range have increased over the last five decades. Experts believe that part of this increase can be attributed to backyard bird feeders.

Text and images by Anna Champagne

Birds are in trouble, and they need our help.

Experts predict that more than 10% percent of the 4,230 bird species in the Western Hemisphere will be extinct in our lifetime if we don’t take action right now.

One of the biggest bird-related problems to solve is habitat loss. Birds are struggling to find places to eat, live, and breed. Other significant issues include pesticides, glass collisions, and invasive species, all of which are killing birds in record numbers.

The good news is that we can all pitch in and help with these problems. With a few tweaks, we can share our spaces, make our yards more bird-friendly, and provide researchers with the data they need to develop even more solutions.

Here are seven things we can do today to help birds.

#1 Provide Food

Studies have shown that food provided via bird feeders can help to fuel bird migration and improve survival rates during harsh winters. This is especially true where habitat has been lost to suburban lawns and asphalt.    

There are many types of bird feeders (and food) to choose from. The type of feeder and food you use should be tailored to the birds you are trying to attract. Mimicking the level at which birds are used to feeding is also helpful. For example, some sparrows don’t like high feeders, and you rarely see a woodpecker (other than the Northern Flicker) eating on the ground.

Some types of food to consider include:

• Black oil sunflower seed: Appeals to many birds, including jays, woodpeckers, goldfinches, cardinals, grosbeaks, titmice, nuthatches, and grackles.

• Safflower: Eaten by cardinals, grosbeaks, sparrows, and doves.

• Striped sunflower seed: Can be cracked by large-beaked birds, including cardinals, blue jays, and grosbeaks.

• Thistle: Appeals to finches, siskins, buntings, and redpolls.

• Peanuts: Loved by many birds, including woodpeckers, jays, kinglets, wrens, chickadees, titmice, bushtits, nuthatches, wrens, kinglets, catbirds, mockingbirds, thrashers, starlings, and some warblers.

• Dried fruit (such as raisins or currants): Appeals to robins, waxwings, bluebirds, and mockingbirds.

• Fresh fruit: Attracts orioles, tanagers, thrashers, woodpeckers, grosbeaks, catbirds, and mockingbirds.

• Shelled and cracked corn: Attracts quail, doves, jays, juncos, and towhees.

• Milo: Enjoyed by pheasants, quails, and doves.

• White proso millet: Enjoyed by ground-feeding birds, including quails, sparrows, doves, cardinals, and blackbirds.

Hanging mesh tube feeders are an excellent way to offer thistle seed. The port sizes are small to prevent seeds from falling through but are large enough to be accessed by birds with tiny beaks, like American Goldfinch.

It is important to note that many types of bird food will also appeal to other forms of wildlife that you may not want to attract, including those that should not be subsidized (deer, bears, skunks, raccoons, etc.). Some foods spoil quickly (fresh fruit) and could be contaminated with aflatoxins (peanuts and corn). Be sure only to put out small amounts of food and ensure that it is kept dry and used up very quickly. Clean up and dispose of any food that has spoiled or been contaminated with bird feces.

Keeping bird feeders and feeder areas clean is also essential to prevent disease risk. Clean bird feeders once per week (clean hummingbird feeders more often), and rake or sweep up any old seed, seed shells, and waste under your feeders. A few types of feeders to try include:

• Low platform bird feeders for ground birds (mourning doves and sparrows).

• Hopper and tube bird feeders for shrub birds (cardinals, finches, etc.).

• Suet feeders for tree birds (woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, etc.).

• Nectar feeders for nectar-loving birds (hummingbirds, orioles).

• Fruit feeders for fruit specialists (orioles, tanagers, waxwings, robins).

The following guides from Cornell Lab of Ornithology provide more information about feeding wild birds.

• Types of bird food and the birds they attract

• How to clean your bird feeder

#2 Provide Water

As helpful as it can be to provide food, it is even more important to make fresh, clean water available. Birds need water for drinking and bathing. You can provide water in small dishes and via birdbaths, water fountains, and garden ponds. Providing water in winter when natural sources are frozen and in summer when natural sources are dried up is especially helpful.

To keep birds safe and discourage the spread of disease, birdbaths and water dishes should be cleaned and disinfected regularly with dish soap or a vinegar solution (do not use chemicals that could harm birds). Replacing the water every two to three days is also good practice to keep the water fresh and prevent mosquito infestations. Adding a fountain, pump, or something else that creates ripples in the water will also help to keep mosquitos at bay since they don’t like to lay eggs in running water.

See tips from the National Audubon Society to learn how to clean your bird bath.

Water should be shallow in bird baths so small songbirds like this Carolina Wren can bathe safely. One to three inches of water is deep enough.

#3 Garden for Birds

Bird feeders do not always provide the nutrients birds need. Furthermore, not every bird eats seed, suet, and nectar. Some birds are carnivorous and need insects in their diet. Other birds rely on berries to get them through the winter. You can provide these food sources by growing native plants.

Native plants are plants that have existed historically within a given area. Non-native plants have not existed historically within a given area; instead, they have been introduced to an area by human activity. Some (but not all) non-native plants are also invasive, which means they have the potential to cause harm to people or the environment.

Native trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses require less watering, fertilization, and fussing. They also attract the native insects that local birds eat and feed to their young. Some recent conservation studies have shown that backyards need a certain percentage of native plants to sustain bird populations, such as the Carolina Chickadee, which relies heavily on native trees for the caterpillars and insects that make up the bulk of their diet.

When selecting the best plants for your bird garden, you’ll want to look for native plants that produce specific types and a high quantity of bird food. For example:

• Tubular flowers, such as columbine, cardinal flowers, jewelweed, and bee balm, produce nectar for hummingbirds.  

• Native sunflowers, asters, and coneflowers provide seeds for songbirds.

• Bushes, such as dogwood and spicebush, and trees, such as cedar and holly, produce berries for songbirds.

You can visit the National Audubon Society’s Native Plant Database to find plants native to your area.

More than 100 North American bird species visit backyard bird feeders. Native plants could help to feed those birds.

#4 Make Your Yard More Bird Friendly

There are many other things that you can do to make your yard more bird-friendly, in addition to providing food, water, and native plants.

A good start is to eliminate or reduce the use of pesticides, including insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, rodenticides, and acaricides. These chemicals poison birds that ingest granules or berries and seeds coated in liquids. The toxins can harm their immune systems, damage their eggs, and inhibit their movements so they can’t escape from predators. Pesticides also eliminate the food (insects and other invertebrates) that birds need to survive.

You can also make your yard more bird-friendly by simply doing less. For example:

• Leave the seedheads on flowering plants after they have bloomed instead of dead-heading them. Birds will eat the seeds in the fall and winter.

• Use fallen leaves as mulch in your gardens rather than raking them all up. The leaves will provide a habitat for insects and the pupae of moth caterpillars (the latter of which is an excellent snack for baby birds).

• Consider replacing some of your existing lawn with flowering native plants or pollinator-friendly plants (clovers, violets, creeping thyme, etc.) that require little water or care.

• Leave standing but dead tree trunks rather than taking them down.  Chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, bluebirds, swallows, flycatchers, and other cavity nesters will use them for nesting.

You can learn more about bird-friendly gardening from the American Bird Conservancy.

Birds like House Wrens eat many insects, including beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, moths, caterpillars, and flies. They also eat spiders, snails, and other things around the yard.

#5 Prevent Glass Collisions

Glass collisions kill hundreds of millions of birds yearly because birds can’t always distinguish between a reflection and a clear flyway. This results in deadly clashes with buildings and other artificial structures when birds fly from place to place or try to evade a predator.

We can minimize unnecessary bird deaths by taking one or more of the following steps:

• Close curtains, blinds, or window coverings.

• Install exterior screens on windows.

• Install window bird feeders.

• Do not place indoor plants in windows.

• Create window patterns with paint pens, tape, decals, strings, cords, or other glass-safe materials.

• Advocate for bird-friendly architectural designs.

Consider participating in Lights Out, a national effort to convince building owners to turn off excess lighting during the months that nocturnal migrating birds are flying overhead. When nocturnal migrating birds fly over large cities, they can become disoriented by the bright lights and collide with buildings.  

Turning off excess lighting during the months when new fledglings are learning to fly can also be helpful to birds.

#6 Keep Birds Safe From Cats

Cats are wonderful creatures. They are super-duper cute and can be fiercely loyal and independent. They are lively and mischievous, making them funny and fun to be around. They are delightful pets and companions. For humans. For birds…not so much.

Over one million feral and outdoor cats are roaming around nowadays, killing about one billion birds yearly. They can’t help themselves, so we need to intervene and keep birds safe from cats. This may involve keeping your pet cat safely indoors or within an outdoor enclosure like a catio (enclosed outdoor patio for cats). Other possible solutions to reduce harm to wild birds include anti-predation devices, cat leashes, and harnesses.

Consider checking out the American Bird Conservancy’s Cats Indoors program for more suggestions on keeping pet cats and birds safe.

Keeping pet cats indoors can also help to keep them safe.

#7 Participate in Citizen Science Projects

There are about 10,000 different species of birds in the world. That is a lot of birds to monitor, so scientists rely on data collected and reported by the general public (citizen scientists) who have observations they can share.

Citizen science involves collecting, analyzing, and reporting data that can be used to conduct scientific research. There are quite a few citizen science projects involving birds. Some of the largest include the following projects.

• eBird is one of the most significant biodiversity-related science projects in the world. Participants enter information about the birds they see while birdwatching in their backyard (or anywhere else in the world) on the eBird site or through the eBird app. This is a great way to keep track of the birds you see for your benefit and the benefit of scientists, who use the data to conduct bird-related research projects.

• Great Backyard Bird Count is a four-day annual survey that takes place over a long weekend in February. Participants watch birds in their backyard or another favorite place to watch birds, identify and count the birds they see, and then submit their findings to scientists who use the data to fuel research all year long.

• Christmas Bird Count is the longest-running citizen science project in the United States. For more than 100 years, citizen scientists and conservationists have conducted an annual bird census during the Christmas season. The current count takes place in December and January.

• Project FeederWatch is an annual survey that takes place between November and April. Participants count the birds that visit their backyards, nature centers, parks, and community areas and submit their tallies to the FeederWatch database. Scientists use the submitted data to learn more about the distribution and abundance of winter birds in the United States and Canada.

• NestWatch is a monitoring program that involves finding, monitoring, and reporting bird nests to help scientists learn more about bird biology. Citizen scientists report when and where nesting occurs, the number of eggs laid in the nest, how many eggs hatch, and how many hatchlings survive. 

Many citizen scientist projects have the potential to help birds. They can also enrich everyday birdwatching and give you a chance to give back to the birds that have brought you joy over the years. If you don’t see something here that interests you, contact a local Audubon Society or birdwatching club for more suggestions or do an internet search for “citizen science projects for birds”.

Learning how many birds are in a given location helps scientists and conservationists understand which bird populations are growing, declining, and stable.