Suet vs Seed Feeder

Suet is a good choice for attracting insect-eating birds ¹. Downy Woodpeckers, the woodpecker most likely to visit a feeder, prefer suet feeders ⁴; Black-capped Chickadees take suet and peanut butter alongside sunflower ⁵. The starling problem has a design fix: suet cages that are only accessible from the bottom tend to be starling-resistant but still let woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees feed ¹.

Black-oil sunflower is the preferred food item for a wide variety of birds and among the favorites of cardinals, chickadees, finches and sparrows ¹; nyjer adds goldfinches, siskins and redpolls, millet the ground-foraging birds, and safflower cardinals and other big-billed birds ¹. Cardinals and finches do not cling to a suet cage, so a seed feeder is the only way to hold them.

Run both: a bottom-access suet cage for woodpeckers, nuthatches and chickadees, and a sunflower feeder for the rest. Plain suet is a fat, so in hot weather watch for softening or an off smell and replace it — many people switch to rendered ‘no-melt’ cakes in summer — and clean both feeders every week or two, more often when wet ¹.

Place feeders close to natural cover such as trees or shrubs, which offer birds refuge from predators, but not so close to strong branches that squirrels can jump across — a distance of about 10 feet is the usual guidance ¹. Windows are the other hazard: collisions kill perhaps a billion or more birds a year in North America, and older rules about safe feeder-to-window distances are no longer thought valid — if a window is near a feeder, treat the glass with markings spaced no more than 2 inches apart, external screens or cords, rather than worrying about the distance ³.

Squirrel baffles — barriers placed between squirrels and feeders — are usually the best defense. Squirrels can jump to feeders placed less than ten feet from a tree or building, so a pole-mounted feeder in the open with a baffle below it, or a tilting baffle at least 18 inches in diameter above a hanging feeder, is the arrangement that works ¹.

Clean seed and suet feeders regularly — every week or two, and more often during heavy use or wet weather — by scrubbing off debris and washing the parts thoroughly with warm water and dish soap ¹. Hummingbird feeders need cleaning far more often, every couple of days and ideally every time they are refilled; discard the solution and clean immediately at any sign of cloudy water or black mold ¹.

If a sick bird appears — House Finch eye disease shows as red, swollen, runny or crusty eyes, and avian pox as wart-like growths around the eye, bill, legs and feet — remove the feeders the bird is using for a couple of weeks and clean the feeders and the area thoroughly, so disease is not spread at the feeder ². Salmonellosis, caused by Salmonella bacteria, is a common cause of mortality in feeder birds and spreads the same way ².

1. Project FeederWatch (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) — Feeding Birds: feeder types, food types, placement and cleaning
2. Project FeederWatch — Sick Birds and Bird Diseases
3. All About Birds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) — Why Birds Hit Windows, and How You Can Help Prevent It
4. All About Birds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) — Downy Woodpecker: Overview and Life History
5. All About Birds (Cornell Lab of Ornithology) — Black-capped Chickadee: Overview and Life History