When to Feed Backyard Birds: A Month-by-Month Guide

Updated September 6, 2026 · 8 min read

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Quick answer

You can feed backyard birds year-round in the United States, and there is no month when you need to stop. What changes through the year is what you put out, not whether you put anything out at all. The one real exception is bear country, where most state agencies want seed feeders down from roughly April through November.

This question gets more confusing answers than it deserves, and most of the confusion has a traceable source. Search it and you will find advice about pausing feeding over the summer months, taking peanuts down while birds are nesting, and switching everything off from May to October. That advice is real, it is sensible, and it is written for British gardens. It does not apply to your yard.

In the United States, year-round feeding is the normal position among the organizations that study this. Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch and Audubon all treat it as an ordinary thing to do. Feeder-watching programs run through the summer. Nobody is going to tell you to stop in June.

What follows is what actually changes month to month, the two myths worth putting to bed, and the situations where taking feeders down genuinely is the right call.

The short version

Year-round is fine. There is no seasonal pause recommended by any major US bird organization
Winter is when high-fat foods matter most: black oil sunflower, suet, peanuts
Spring and summer bring hummingbirds, and seed traffic drops because natural food is everywhere
Late summer looks like disaster and is not. Birds molt, go quiet, and stop showing up for a few weeks
Bear country is the real exception. Most state agencies advise removing seed feeders roughly April 1 to November 30
Cleaning matters more than timing. Every two weeks, more in heat or during a local outbreak

Month by month

Regional variation is significant here. Timings below run roughly two to four weeks earlier in the South and later in the northern tier and at elevation.

Months	What is happening	What to put out
December–February	Peak feeder season. Natural food is scarce, days are short, birds need calories overnight	Black oil sunflower, suet, peanuts, nyjer. Keep water open if you can
March	Territories forming. Cardinals start attacking windows. Early hummingbirds reach the Gulf Coast	Same as winter. In the South, hummingbird feeder goes out
April	Migration builds. Nest building starts. Bears wake in bear country	Add hummingbird feeder further north. Remove seed feeders where bears are active
May	Peak migration. Nesting underway	Sunflower, suet, nectar. Some people add mealworms for nesting birds
June–July	Nesting and fledging. Natural insects and seed are abundant, so feeder traffic drops	Keep going if you enjoy it. Adults bring fledglings to feeders, which is worth seeing
August	Molt. Birds go quiet and scarce. This alarms people every single year	Same. Clean more often — heat spoils seed and nectar fast
September–October	Fall migration. Goldfinches turn drab. Feeder activity picks back up	Everything. Leave the hummingbird feeder up a few weeks past the last bird
November	Winter birds arrive. Bear activity ends in most states	Back to full winter setup. Seed feeders return in bear country

The two myths

Feeding does not stop birds migrating

This is the one people worry about most, and it is not how migration works. Migration is triggered primarily by day length, not by food supply. A hummingbird does not stay in Ohio in November because there is sugar water available; the shortening photoperiod sets the departure regardless of what is in your yard.

Cornell Lab is unambiguous on this. Leaving a hummingbird feeder up into the fall does not hold birds back. What it does do is give late migrants and stragglers somewhere to refuel, which is the opposite of harmful.

Birds do not become dependent on your feeder

The classic work here is a Wisconsin study of Black-capped Chickadees by Brittingham and Temple, which looked at what happened when feeders were removed after birds had used them for years. The birds shifted back to wild food. Even during the coldest weather, feeder food made up only around a fifth of their daily energy intake — the rest was found the way it always had been.

That is worth knowing if you are going away for two weeks, or thinking about stopping. Your feeder is a supplement, not a lifeline, and the birds using it have not forgotten how to forage.

The honest caveat. Consistency still matters for a different reason. Birds learn which yards are reliable, and an irregularly filled feeder gets checked less often. If you want a busy feeder, filling it regularly matters more than filling it constantly.

What changes by season

Winter

Fat is the currency. A small songbird can burn a substantial share of its body weight overnight in cold weather, and high-fat foods are what replace it. Black oil sunflower has a thin shell and high oil content, which is why it outperforms almost everything else. Suet comes into its own below about 50°F, when it holds together properly.

Open water is often harder for birds to find than food in freezing weather. A heated bird bath brings in species that never touch a feeder.

Spring

Traffic gets erratic as territories form and natural food returns. Cardinals and robins start attacking windows and car mirrors, which is a territorial male fighting his own reflection rather than anything wrong with the bird.

Hummingbird feeders go out ahead of the first arrivals, which means February on the Gulf Coast and early May in the northern tier.

Summer

The main change is maintenance, not menu. Heat spoils seed and turns nectar over fast. Above 90°F, hummingbird nectar needs changing every two days. Seed feeders need cleaning more often than the standard two weeks, and it is worth filling with less at a time so nothing sits and molds.

Fall

Feeder traffic returns as natural food runs down. Goldfinches molt out of their yellow into drab olive, and people report that they have left. They have not; they are standing on the feeder looking like a different bird.

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Black oil sunflower is the seed we would buy if we could only buy one, because it brings in the widest range of species for the money. The drawback is real though: it produces a lot of shell debris under the feeder, which needs raking up and which will kill grass over a season. Sunflower chips avoid the mess but cost considerably more and spoil faster in wet weather.

When to actually stop

There are three situations where taking feeders down is the right call, and none of them is a date on the calendar.

Sick or dead birds in your yard

Take feeders and bird baths down for one to two weeks, clean and disinfect everything, and rake up what is underneath. This is the single most important thing in this article. See sick birds at your feeder for what to look for and what to report.

Bear country, roughly April to November

Most state wildlife agencies advise removing seed feeders and suet for the months bears are active. Bringing feeders in overnight is not sufficient — bears feed in daylight too. A bird feeder is a concentrated calorie source, and a bear that finds one comes back. In many states feeding bears is illegal, and a bird feeder can count. See bears and bird feeders.

The third is if you keep poultry. Current federal guidance does not recommend removing feeders for avian influenza in general — songbird cases have been a small fraction of wild bird detections — but USDA does advise poultry keepers to remove food and water sources that draw wild birds near their flock.

Why American advice differs from British advice

If you have read about pausing feeding in summer, that guidance comes from UK organizations and reflects a genuinely different situation: different species, a different disease picture, and a different regulatory framework. Trichomonosis has driven finch declines in Britain in a way it has not here. Their advice on bird tables, cleaning products and moving feeders after cleaning also differs from US practice.

Neither set of advice is wrong. They are answers to different questions. On this site, everything is written from American sources for American yards — and where the two diverge, we say so rather than leave you guessing.

Common questions

Should I stop feeding birds in summer?

No. There is no US recommendation to pause. Traffic will drop anyway as natural food becomes abundant, but that is the birds’ choice rather than something you need to enforce. Clean more often in the heat, and put out less at a time so seed does not sit and spoil.

Will feeding birds stop them migrating?

No. Migration is driven mainly by day length. Leaving a hummingbird feeder up in fall does not hold anyone back — it gives late migrants somewhere to refuel.

What if I go away for two weeks?

Nothing bad happens. Birds using your feeder are getting most of their food elsewhere and will simply spread out. Clean the feeder before you go rather than leaving damp seed sitting in it for a fortnight.

All my birds vanished in August. What did I do wrong?

Almost certainly nothing. Late summer molt is the usual cause — birds replace their feathers, go quiet, stay under cover, and are simply less visible. Natural food is also at its annual peak. It typically resolves within a few weeks. The full list of causes is here.

Is it bad to feed birds during nesting season?

No. Adults feed insects to nestlings, not seed, so your feeder is feeding the parents rather than the chicks. Whole peanuts are worth avoiding at nest sites where they might be carried to young; peanut pieces or a mesh feeder avoids the issue entirely.

Do I need to take feeders down for bird flu?

Not currently, unless you also keep poultry. As of early 2026, songbirds account for a small share of wild bird detections and there is no official recommendation for feeder removal on those grounds. State agencies do occasionally issue local advice, so it is worth checking yours. Routine cleaning remains the actual defense.

Related guides

Sources: Cornell Lab of Ornithology (All About Birds); Project FeederWatch, Feeding Birds and Sick Birds and Bird Diseases; National Audubon Society; USDA APHIS National Wildlife Disease Program; Brittingham, M.C. and Temple, S.A., studies on supplemental feeding and Black-capped Chickadee survival, University of Wisconsin; state wildlife agency bear guidance.