Put Your Bird Feeders In The Right Place To Keep Your Flying Guests Safe

You may think you can just set your feeder anywhere in your yard and it will be perfectly fine and ready to go. However, if you want to help keep your winged visitors safe, you need to consider the surrounding features and the distance from the bird feeder to your home, as the feeder being both too close and too far can cause issues, especially when it comes to them hitting your windows. This is one of the reasons why you may want to reconsider using a window bird feeder in your yard. But, even regular feeders can cause problems. 

Window bird strikes are common with birds. They are unable to understand that the view they see is merely a reflection and run right into the glass. This is because they either think the sky is continuing on without an obstruction or they believe there is another bird in front of them and run forward due to aggression. Placing your feeder at the right distance might not stop this completely, but it will reduce the chances and the likelihood of these poor animals colliding with your home.

You actually have two choices for the optimal distance between your bird feeder and house. It either needs to be close, less than 3 feet or further than 30 feet away. Essentially, between 3 and 30 feet is a danger zone for your bird feeder. If it is very close, birds don't have enough time to get up to speed and hurt themselves if they hit the window. But at 30 feet, they have plenty of space to get away from the house, and they're less likely to see the reflection in the window.

For those with small yards, putting your bird feeder close to the house sounds like an ideal option, but there are problems with the falling seeds attracting rodents and squirrels, as well as other unwanted guests — which is why you should reconsider using a bird feeder if you live in bear territory. Feeders may not only attract animals who want to enjoy seeds, but who are looking to get an easy meal from the birds resting and enjoying themselves.

If you want to keep your bird feeder extra safe, and also prevent squirrels from stealing all of the seeds first, you need to follow a few other rules, most having to do with distance. It's a good idea to keep your bird feeder at least 10 feet away from any bushes, walls, or trees. This makes it too far for squirrels to jump. However, it's also a way to keep the birds safe from animals like cats that may use obstacles as a launching-off point to attack their flying prey. If you have feeders closer to the ground than 4 feet, predators and pesky squirrels can get in from underneath without a baffle.

Thankfully, it's not all bad news. With just a few hacks, you can get birds to flock to your yard and keep them safe. The basic premise is to place your bird feeders out in the open, offer plenty of different options in food type and feeder height, and take steps to stop birds from crashing into your windows, either by moving bird feeders away, or adding stickers, netting, or using glass-safe markers.