Garden Bird Feeders - How To Pick The Best One

So what is the key to choosing the right garden bird feeder? What do you need to do first, and is your choice truly that important? I guess in the beginning, it’s not as important as it might be later on. It’s perfectly ok to choose a basic garden bird feeder as your first one, even one with a low price tag. To start with, you won’t need anything too fancy, at least until you work out what you really want from your bird feeder.

Then again, if you’ve been doing this for a while, you won’t have much hesitation in going for the right type of garden bird feeders and you might even be able to teach me a thing or two. If you are new to birding though, you’re probably wondering how you will be able to choose the right bird feeder for your garden. Well, there are a few things to consider but I will list them here to make it easier for you to work through them.

But just before I do that, if you don’t really want to go through all the fuss, or if you’d rather have the pleasure of discovering as you go along, then go ahead and get yourself one of the basic platform garden bird feeders. It’s a great one to begin with and will get you off to a great start.

However if you want to gather as much information as possible before making your choice on which garden bird feeder to buy, read on. I think the best way is to make a list of the important facts and relevant points that you should consider. So, you need to think about;

* What kinds of birds do you want to attract to your garden

* How long-lasting is your bird feeder

* Is maintenance easy

* How much seed will it contain

* Do you live in the warmer climes or the cooler ones

* Are you on the birds migration path

* Do you want to squirrel and raccoon proof your feeder

* How much will you be willing to spend

Just to clarify the first item in the list, one of the most important questions you can ask of yourself when buying a bird feeder is what type of bird do you want to bring to your garden? This is important because your choice of feeder will always be influenced by the type of bird you want to attract.

For example, if you are hoping to attract some humming birds, then you won’t get far with a platform garden bird feeder. Hummingbirds drink nectar so you’ll need to get a special feeder designed just for hummingbirds and orioles. On the other hand, if you want something like northern cardinals then you’ll probably want to get a garden bird feeder that sits on the ground. For woodpeckers and such, you should look at a suet bird feeder.

You probably get the general idea, but don’t worry of you’re still wondering how on earth you’ll be able to find out which birds are in your area. That can be a fairly simple problem to overcome as any field guide for your area will almost certainly provide it, or failing that I’ve always found the internet to be a great source of information. If that doesn’t help, you could always look for information at your library or maybe even from a bird society in your area.

Once you know all the pertinent details it’s then just a matter of narrowing it down to which particular birds you want to attract. After that you can again resort to any of these sources to get the low-down on which garden bird feeders the birds will prefer, or you could always ask a friendly sales person from your local pet store.