All about Feeding Wild Birds

Bird Seed Preference Chart

Bird

Picture

Bird Seed Preference

American Robin

Robins are not seed-eating birds. They feed on earthworms, their favorite food. They will eat from a bird table or at feeders with trays offering cut up raisins soaked in water, suet, suet mixtures, peanut butter mixtures, peanut hearts, cut up currants, pecan meats, sliced pears, strawberries, cherries, cottage cheese, and pieces of American cheese. They will also eat cooked plain spaghetti, doughnuts, white bread and cornbread.

Blue Jay

Diet is comprised mainly of vegetable material such as wild fruits, acorns, hazelnuts, beechnuts, corn, and other grains, and also insects of many kinds. Feeders with peanuts, mixed grains, and especially sunflower seeds are popular with Jays.

Barn Swallow

The swallow is considered and opportunistic feeder with its diet mainly consisting of locally available insect species.

Baltimore Oriole

Orioles eat bugs such as caterpillars, beetles, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, and spiders. Fruit is another part of their diet. Grapes, pears, cherries, apples, oranges, bananas, coconuts, and melons are all part of the Orioles fruit diet. The berries that the orioles eat are mulberries, service berries, blackberries, and blueberries. The last part of the diet is vegetables including garden peas, corn, and squash.

Brown-Headed Cowbird

Cowbirds often feed on the ground, away from vegetation. Their main food items are seeds and arthropods. They sometimes hawk, looking for slow flying insects. In a quantitative anaylsis of the cowbird diet, it was found that nearly 75% of the diet was 'weed' seed, with most of the remaining 25% made up of grasshoppers and beetles.

Crow

Diet consists primarily of insects with a strong preference for corn. Crows will attack vegetables and fruit. Deter with flasy pie pans, old CDs, etc.

Dark-Eyed Junco

During the summer, about half of the Dark-eyed Junco's diet is made up of insects and other arthropods, the other half consists of seeds. The young eat mostly arthropods. In winter, the diet shifts more to seeds and berries.

Evening Grosbeak

Large seeds, especially ash, maple, and sunflower seeds from bird feeders, make up most of the Evening Grosbeak's diet but also eat but also eat a variety invertebrates like budworms.

Gold Finch

The American Goldfinch has a varied diet. Being principally a seed-eater, the bird has an abundant food supply for much of the year, including seeds of thistle, dandelion, ragweed, mullein, cosmos, goatsbeard, sunflower, and alder. The birds will also eat insects. Feeder acitivity will increase prior to storms.

House Finch

House Finches feed primarily on birdseed, with sunflower, nyger (thistle), white proso millet and canary seeds being their favorites. House finches will also help themselves to suet and nectar feeders.

House Wren

Gathering their food from tree foliage, House Wrens feast on a variety of invertebrates, including millipedes, spiders, snails, caterpillars, grasshoppers, ants, and beetles.

Grackle

Diets consist mainly of insects and other invertebrates but may also include goldfish, minnows, crayfish, small frogs, salamanders and mice. During migration and winter, common grackles eat mostly grains from farm fields and seeds, particularly corn and acorns. They also eat some fruits. Grackles are very opportunistic feeders and will sift through garbage for a meal.

Great-Crested Flycatcher

Diet consists of flying insects, such as beetles, flies, wasps, katydids, and dragonflies, although fruits of the elderberry, wild cherry, and blackberry are eaten by both adults and young.

Mourning Dove

Doves feed primarily on the ground, consuming waste grains spilled from feeders. Birds will eat on a platform as well.

Northern Cardinal

Foods include seeds, leaf buds, flowers, berries, and fruit. Up to one-third of its summer diet can be insects. Has a preference for large seed in a steady stationary feeder located 5-6 feet above the ground. Cardinals prefer to eat early in the morning or late in the evening.

Northern Mockingbird

Northern Mockingbird diet of this species includes flying insects like beetles (50 kinds) along with wasps, bees, dragonflies, mosquitoes and other insects. It captures insects in mid-air. It also eats mulberries, blackberries, wild cherries and wild grapes.

Northern Oriole

Baltimore Orioles eat caterpillars, fruits, insects, spiders and nectar.

Pileated Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpeckers eat wood-boring insects and insects that nest in trees, including long-horned beetles and especially carpenter ants. They also eat some fruits and nuts as well suet.

Pine Grosbeak

Seeds, fruit, buds, berries, and some insects make up the majority of the Pine Grosbeak's diet. They feed insects and spiders to their young, but adults eat more than 90% vegetable matter throughout the year.

Purple Finch

Purple Martin

Purple Martins' diet consists primarily of insects. An adult Purple Martin can consume over 2,000 mosquitos a day. On a given day, however, martins will consume a wide variety of insects, and only a fraction of that is mosquitos. Other insects on their diet include: dragonflies, flies, beetles, moths, ants, grasshoppers, and even bees and wasps.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch

Seeds of conifers make up a large part of the Red-breasted Nuthatch winter diet. Insects as well as their eggs and larvae, or the immature forms, and spiders and their eggs are also important in the nuthatch’s diet. These birds feed on several forest insects. Chopped nuts, seeds, and suet readily attract nuthatches to feeding trays in winter.

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

Eats seeds, caterpillars, insects, tree flowers, fruits and berries.

Ruby Throated Hummingbird

Diet consists of nectar, insects, and spiders but will also take tree sap from woodpecker drillings. Their northern distribution may depend on availability of this tree sap provided by sapsuckers' drillings when flower blooms are not as abundant.

Snow Bunting

Seeds are part of the Snow Bunting's diet year round, but especially in winter. During summer, they eat more insects and spiders, and the young are fed almost entirely an invertebrate diet.

Tufted Titmouse

In winter, titmice cache collected seeds and acorns throughout their territories and frequently visit bird feeders. Diet consists of a variety of invertebrates, such as caterpillars, beetles, wasps, ants, bees, treehoppers, spiders, and snails. They glean prey from tree bark and twigs, but they may also forage on the ground.