Setting up your first bird feeder

Most first feeders fail for one of four reasons, and none of them is the feeder. It was hung somewhere birds do not feel safe. It was filled with a cheap mix they will not eat. It was raided by squirrels within a week. Or it was given four days and then written off.

This hub is the fix for all four, in order.

Start here, in this order

1. Your first feeder, start to finish — the full walkthrough, from unboxing to the first bird.
2. Best bird feeders for beginners — if you have not bought anything yet.
3. The starter kit — feeder, seed, pole, baffle and brush as one purchase, so nothing is missing on day one.
4. Where to hang it — the distances, including the ones that stop squirrels and the ones that stop window strikes.
5. Getting the first birds to show up — what to do in the first three weeks.

The three distances that matter

Height: about five to six feet. High enough that a squirrel cannot jump up to it from the ground — Duncraft's 5-7-9 rule puts a squirrel's standing jump at four to five feet — and low enough that you can refill it without a ladder, which matters more than people expect in February.

Cover: about ten feet. Project FeederWatch recommends placing feeders close to natural cover so birds can escape a hawk, but warns against putting them so close that squirrels can jump across, and calls about ten feet a good compromise. That single sentence resolves the contradiction most beginners run into.

Windows: under three feet, or over thirty. This is a safety rule, not a preference. Glass collisions kill more than a billion birds a year in the United States according to the American Bird Conservancy. A feeder mounted right against the glass means a bird cannot build up lethal speed; a feeder far away means the reflection is not part of its escape route. The dangerous distance is the middle. See keeping birds safe, and if a window is already being hit, how to stop birds hitting your windows has the spacing rule and the products that meet it.

What to expect in the first month

Nothing, then everything. A new feeder in a yard with no feeding history can sit untouched for days or a few weeks — birds locate food by watching each other, and until one chickadee finds you, nobody has anything to watch. In a neighborhood where somebody already feeds, it can be same-day.

The mistake is moving the feeder every few days. Each move restarts the clock. Pick the spot using the distances above, then leave it for at least two weeks before concluding anything. If a month passes with nothing at all, work through why no birds are coming rather than buying a different feeder.

The thing to buy that is not a feeder

A pole and a baffle. Almost every beginner spends their whole budget on the feeder and hangs it from a branch, which is the one place a squirrel is guaranteed to reach. A fifteen-dollar baffle on a pole protects every feeder you will ever own. If you can only buy two things, buy a plain feeder and a baffle, not an expensive feeder on its own.