Feeder guide by bird

Mourning Dove Feeder

The best mourning dove feeder is not a hanging one: doves feed on the ground and in the open, and All About Birds' advice is to scatter seed, particularly millet, on the ground or on platform feeders ⁴.

Everything below about feeder design, foods, placement and cleaning is drawn from Project FeederWatch ¹² and All About Birds ³⁴.

Mourning dove on the ground — the best mourning dove feeder is a platform or scattered seed — Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What mourning doves eat

Seeds make up 99 percent of a Mourning Dove's diet — cultivated grains and even peanuts, wild grasses, weeds and herbs, occasionally berries — and a dove eats roughly 12 to 20 percent of its body weight per day, about 71 calories ⁴. They swallow seed whole and store it in the crop, then fly to a safe perch to digest; the record is 17,200 bluegrass seeds in one crop ⁴.

At the feeder that means millet, a favored food of smaller ground-foraging birds, and cracked corn, which attracts doves, quail and sparrows ¹; black-oil sunflower is taken as well. Skip milo, which most birds leave to waste ¹.

The mourning dove feeder itself

Trays attract most species of feeder birds, and placed near the ground they are most likely to attract juncos, doves and sparrows ¹; large hoppers also let larger species like doves and grackles feed ¹. A tube feeder does nothing for a dove — it cannot use the perches — though it will clean up the seed that finches drop beneath it.

Keep cats indoors: birds that spend much of their time on the ground are particularly vulnerable to prowling cats ⁴, and cats kill hundreds of millions of birds a year ¹. Plant dense shrubs or evergreens nearby for nesting sites ⁴.

Placement, squirrels and windows

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.

Keeping the feeder clean and the birds healthy

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.

Recommended feeder types

Platform Feeder →Ground Feeder →Full bird profile →Plants for this bird →

More feeder guides

Platform Feeder →Hopper Feeder →Tube Feeder →Suet Feeder →Hummingbird Feeder →Window Feeder →Tube vs hopper feeder →Suet vs seed feeder →Black oil sunflower feeder →Squirrel proof bird feeder →No birds at the feeder? →

Frequently asked questions

What do you feed mourning doves?

Millet and cracked corn on the ground or a platform, plus black-oil sunflower; seeds are 99 percent of their diet ¹⁴.

Will mourning doves use a hanging mourning dove feeder?

Not the perches of a tube; they use platforms, large hoppers and the ground beneath other feeders ¹.

How often should I clean a bird feeder?

Every week or two for seed and suet feeders, more often in wet weather or heavy use; every couple of days for hummingbird feeders. Scrub, then wash with warm water and dish soap ¹.

How far should a feeder be from a window?

Distance rules are no longer considered valid; instead make any nearby window bird-safe with markings spaced no more than 2 inches apart, exterior screens, or hanging cords ³.