Rodents, raccoons and the visitors you did not invite

“Do bird feeders attract mice?” and “do bird feeders attract rats?” are both common searches, and the honest answer is: not directly. A rodent cannot get into a hanging tube. What it can do is eat the small pile of seed and hulls that accumulates underneath, every day, reliably.

Which means this is a spillage problem, and spillage is fixable.

The four fixes, in order of effect

1. Fit a catch tray. Most of what falls lands in it instead of on the ground. Buy one with a screen bottom that drains — detail here.
2. Put out less. Half-fill the feeder. Less seed in the feeder means less spilled and less standing about going stale.
3. Switch to shell-free seed. No hulls to drop, and hulled seed cannot sprout either. The comparison is here.
4. Clear the ground. Rake underneath monthly, more often if you have seen rodent activity. An old hull layer hides spoiled seed and is itself shelter.

What makes it worse

• Ground feeding. Scattering seed on the ground is the single most direct way to feed rodents. If you feed juncos and doves on a low tray, clear it each evening.
• Filler-heavy mixes. Birds flick out the milo and corn, so more of what you bought ends up underneath. See here.
• An unbaffled feeder being raided nightly. Squirrels and raccoons spill enormously more than birds do — one of the less obvious arguments for a baffle.
• Storing seed badly. A paper sack in a shed is a rodent buffet. Use a sealed metal bin — storage rules.

Raccoons

Nocturnal, dexterous, strong, and entirely capable of removing a feeder and carrying it away. Suet is their favorite target.

What works: bringing feeders in at night during a raccoon problem, a baffled pole (the same geometry that stops squirrels slows raccoons), and not leaving suet or peanuts out overnight. What does not: hoping.

Bears — the one hard rule

Project FeederWatch recommends against any feeding in bear country except when bears are hibernating. That is worth taking seriously as written: a bear that learns feeders are food becomes a bear that has to be dealt with, and that outcome is almost always fatal for the bear.

If bears are in your area, feed only in deep winter, or not at all. There is no clever feeder that solves this.

Do not use poison

Rodenticide near a feeder is a bad idea for reasons beyond the rodents. Poisoned rodents are eaten by hawks, owls and pets, and secondary poisoning is a documented and serious problem for raptors. If you have created a rodent problem, remove the food source — which is what every fix on this page does.

Starlings, grackles and pigeons

Not a health problem, but the same category of unwanted visitor. The levers are physical: short perches exclude big birds, a caged feeder excludes them entirely, an upside-down suet cage keeps starlings off the suet, and safflower is taken by cardinals but generally not by grackles — see here.

The routine that prevents all of this

1. Catch tray fitted, seed shell-free or close to it.
2. Feeder half-filled rather than brimming.
3. Ground raked monthly.
4. Seed stored sealed, in metal, off the floor.
5. Nothing left out overnight where raccoons are active.