Plant collection

Berry Plants for Birds

The trick with berry plants for birds is sequence: a yard that fruits from June to February feeds robins, cardinals, waxwings and thrushes in every month, not one glut in August.

All nine below are native; fruiting and growing facts are from the Wildflower Center's Native Plant Database, the case for natives is Audubon's ¹, and robin and cardinal diets are from All About Birds ¹¹¹².

American elderberry clusters — berry plants for birds ripen in sequence from summer to winter — Photo: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab from Beltsville, Maryland, USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Berry plants for birds: early summer to fall

Canada serviceberry fruits red to purple in early summer and is an important food plant for birds ²; red mulberry drops fruit for birds and mammals over a long season ³. American elderberry's late-summer berries are relished by many bird species ⁴; flowering dogwood's red fall fruit is listed for birds, mammals and deer ⁵ and is on the diet lists of both Northern Cardinal and American Robin ¹¹¹². Trumpet honeysuckle's summer berries attract quail, Purple Finch, goldfinch, Hermit Thrush and American Robin ¹⁰.

Winter berries

Winterberry holds red fruit on bare branches throughout winter ⁶; American holly's berries attract many bird species on an evergreen that also gives cover ⁷; eastern red cedar's blue berries are a staple for many birds including the Cedar Waxwing ⁸; Virginia creeper feeds chickadees, nuthatches, thrushes, woodpeckers and more through the winter ⁹. Robins that stay north for winter move to moist woods where berry-producing trees and shrubs are common ¹² — a berry-rich yard is why some stay.

Why native plants first

Native plants are those that occur naturally in the region where they evolved, and Audubon calls them the ecological basis on which birds depend: without them and the insects that co-evolved with them, local birds cannot survive ¹. The scale matters — a native oak supports over 500 species of caterpillars where a ginkgo hosts five, and it takes more than 6,000 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees ¹. Most nursery landscaping plants are alien species, so choosing natives is the single landscaping decision with the clearest effect on bird populations ¹.

The alternative is what most yards already have. Audubon notes that manicured lawn now covers over 40 million acres of the United States as a green monoculture, that the traditional suburban lawn carries on average ten times more chemical pesticide per acre than farmland, and that the continental U.S. has lost 150 million acres of habitat and farmland to sprawl ¹. Every bed of natives that replaces turf is habitat that lawn cannot be, and long-lived native trees such as oaks and maples also store carbon ¹.

Check the native range before buying: the Wildflower Center record for this species lists the states and provinces where it occurs naturally ², and Audubon's zip-code native plant database narrows that to your area and the bird groups each plant attracts ¹. Once established, native plants generally need little maintenance and far less water than lawn, and they do not need the pesticides that make a yard poor bird habitat ¹.

Each plant above links to its own profile with the Wildflower Center's native range, so you can confirm it occurs naturally where you live before buying ¹.

More plant guides

Trumpet Honeysuckle →American Elderberry →Canadian Serviceberry →Flowering Dogwood →Winterberry →American Holly →Eastern Redcedar →Virginia Creeper →Red Mulberry →Native plants for birds →Seed plants for birds →Nectar plants for birds →Shelter plants for birds →

Frequently asked questions

Which berry plants feed birds in winter?

Winterberry, American holly, eastern red cedar and Virginia creeper all hold fruit into winter ⁶⁷⁸⁹.

What berries do robins eat?

Chokecherries, hawthorn, dogwood, sumac and juniper berries, among an enormous variety of fruit ¹².