Best Practices for Safe Bird Feeding

We still recommend feeding wild birds all year round. The research shows there is more evidence of benefit than harm when feeding is done hygienically. Importantly, the core issue isn't the type of food being provided, it's the surfaces we feed on and the hygiene practices we follow.

We understand that recent guidance has raised concerns about seeds and peanuts during summer months, however, the evidence points to surface hygiene and bird crowding as the more significant variables in transmission risk. Keep feeders clean and dry, rotate feeding areas regularly, and avoid flat feeding surfaces, and you can continue to safely offer seeds and nuts all year round.

It is also worth noting that the RSPB's own commissioned literature review (Peach et al., 2026, RSPB Research Report 85) explicitly identifies as a key knowledge gap "the absence of studies comparing the implications for bird fitness and/or pathogen transmission from year-round versus seasonal provision of supplementary food." In other words, there is currently no peer-reviewed scientific evidence that stopping seed feeding for six months produces better outcomes for birds than continuing to feed with proper hygiene practices.

If you spot a sick bird, remove all food immediately, deep clean all feeders, and don't feed for 2-4 weeks to allow birds to disperse before restarting.

Trichomonosis is caused by a single-celled parasite that infects the throat, causing lesions that make swallowing difficult or impossible. If you see any of the following symptoms in a garden bird, act immediately:

• Difficulty swallowing
• Fluffed-up feathers
• Drooling or regurgitation of food
• Wet feathers around the face
• Lethargy
• Laboured breathing

Pause feeding immediately and remove all feeders and water baths for 2-4 weeks to break the transmission cycle. Thoroughly clean and dry all equipment before putting it back out.

Good hygiene is the single most effective thing you can do to protect the birds visiting your garden. The RSPB's own literature review found that feeder cleaning reduced pathogen load across three separate studies, making it the best-evidenced mitigation available. Here's what we recommend:

• Clean feeders thoroughly at least once a week and allow them to dry fully before refilling
• Rotate feeding areas around the garden regularly to prevent contaminated debris building up in one spot
• Use tube feeders rather than flat surfaces, they keep food cleaner and drier
• Only put out enough food for one day at a time
• Avoid bird tables or flat feeding trays where food can get wet or birds can stand in it
• Keep spare feeders so you can swap them out while others are drying
• Empty bird baths and water sources in the evening, allow to dry, then refill with fresh water in the morning
• If you spot a sick bird, remove all feeders immediately and don't replace them for 2-4 weeks
• Feed a high-quality no-mess seed mix to reduce waste, our No Mess Mix is ideal

The latest research shows the biggest risk factor for Trichomonosis transmission isn't the food itself, it's poor hygiene on flat feeding surfaces such as bird tables, feeder trays and in bird baths.

Trichomonosis cannot survive in dry conditions, but research has shown in lab tests, trichomonosis can survive for up to 48 hours at 37°C on moist, but not dry, birdseed and in water for up to 30 hours (Peach et al., 2026, RSPB Research Report 85). This is precisely why keeping food dry and cleaning water sources daily is so important.

The problem with flat surfaces is that sick birds, which tend to be lethargic and struggle to swallow, linger at feeding stations rather than moving on. Video data collected at trichomonosis outbreak sites confirms that birds showing clinical signs of disease spend longer at food and water sources and regurgitate food and water that is then readily available to other birds, significantly increasing the risk of transmission.

We recommend switching to easy-to-clean tubular seed feeders and for ground-feeding birds like robins and blackbirds, instead of using a bird table, scatter a small handful of food and rotate the spot regularly. Water is vital, especially during dry months, but bird baths should be thoroughly cleaned daily and allowed to dry fully before refilling.

Good hygiene has always mattered when feeding wild birds, and the more we understand about disease transmission, the clearer the importance becomes. Building a regular cleaning routine into your schedule is one of the most effective steps you can take.

Clean your feeders at least once a week. Start with hot soapy water to remove debris and old food, then disinfect with a 10% bleach solution or an off-the-shelf bird feeder disinfectant. Rinse thoroughly and allow to dry completely before refilling, damp feeders are a disease risk in themselves.

Our top tip: keep a set of spare feeders. Swapping clean and dirty ones over means you don't need to rush the drying process, and your birds don't go without food while you clean.

When too many birds are competing for too few feeders, the risk of Trichomonosis transmission rises, more birds sharing the same surfaces means more bird-to-bird contact and a greater chance of the parasite passing between them.

If you're seeing birds queuing for feeders or a constant stream of visitors, it's worth creating additional feeding opportunities. Spreading more feeders across different locations reduces crowding, and a feeder pole is an excellent way to hang multiple feeders without taking up much garden space. A small scatter feed on the ground can also take the pressure off hanging feeders.

This is one of the most important things you can do. Research has shown that Trichomonosis can persist for up to 48 hours in moist but not dry bird seed (in a lab environment at 37°C, cooler temperatures decreased the time - McBurney et al. 2017), so keeping food as dry as possible directly reduces the risk of the parasite surviving in your garden.

Use tube feeders, which naturally keep seed drier than open trays, and consider adding a rain guard to protect seed from wet weather. Only put out as much food as birds will eat in a day so nothing sits and becomes damp overnight.

Husks and waste seed build up under feeders quickly, creating damp debris that becomes a disease risk, particularly for ground-feeding birds. Keeping the area under your feeders clean is an essential part of good feeding hygiene, and the simplest way to reduce this problem is to feed high quality foods that leave no waste.

Suet pellets, suet balls, mealworms, sunflower hearts, kibbled peanuts, and our No Mess Mix are all excellent husk-free choices for year-round feeding. Our No Mess Mix was specifically created to minimise waste, every ingredient is husk-free and chosen because birds eat it all, leaving very little behind. Which? independently tested it against 22 other popular mixes and awarded it Best Buy status with the highest score by a considerable margin.

Sunflower hearts on their own are another great option, nutritious, husk-free, and a firm favourite with many common garden birds.

Resources for wild birds are at a historic low. Habitat loss, insect decline, non-native planting, and increasingly extreme weather have together made the natural world a much harder place for birds to survive. Our gardens have become a genuine lifeline, particularly in urban environments where paved driveways and low-wildlife planting have removed much of the natural food that was once available.

Spring and summer are among the most demanding times of year for birds. When raising chicks, adult birds often rely on garden feeders as an easy food source for themselves, preserving their energy for finding natural food, insects, worms, berries, for their young. It's a strategy worth supporting.

Our summers are also getting longer and more extreme. The prolonged drought of 2025 made it significantly harder for birds like blackbirds to access earthworms, and those conditions are becoming more frequent. A reliable garden feeder can make a real difference when the natural environment fails to provide.

The scale of the benefit that garden feeding provides is significant. The RSPB's own literature review found that seed and fat provision during winter was associated with an average 77% increase in bird survival rates across eight separate studies, an effect the authors describe as large enough to have "ecologically significant implications for the population dynamics of the species involved" (Peach et al., 2026, RSPB Research Report 85). Stopping feeding removes this benefit entirely.

At a population level, the same review found that species showing the greatest increases in garden feeder usage also showed the greatest increases in population size. Goldfinch numbers are up 129%, great spotted woodpecker up 388%, and siskin up over 200% - increases the review concludes are probably driven by the widespread growth of supplementary feeding. Garden feeders are not a minor supplement, for many species they have become a meaningful driver of population recovery.

In April 2026, the RSPB launched its "Feed Safely, Feed Seasonally" campaign, recommending that we pause offering seeds and peanuts between May and October, and suggested only feeding mealworms and suet to reduce Trichomonosis transmission during peak disease months.

We respect the RSPB and share their concern. The 66% decline in greenfinch numbers between 1995 and 2023 is deeply troubling, and it is a crisis that demands a serious response. But we believe a blanket nationwide withdrawal on seed feeding is too blunt an instrument, and the RSPB's own research supports that conclusion.

The review that informed the new guidelines explicitly states that there is currently no scientific evidence to support the six-month pause, identifying as a key knowledge gap "the absence of studies comparing the implications for bird fitness and/or pathogen transmission from year-round versus seasonal provision of supplementary food" (Peach et al., 2026, RSPB Research Report 85).

The report further acknowledges that the advice to temporarily remove feeders "is only weakly supported by empirical evidence." The review also found that when feeders were experimentally removed, birds lost not just disease exposure but also the measurable health benefits that feeding had provided, including improved antioxidant levels, reduced stress, and stronger immune defence.

Of the studies specifically examining seed or fat provision during spring, summer or autumn, the review found that two showed positive outcomes for birds and one showed no effect. None showed harm. The authors conclude that it is not possible to draw general conclusions about the impacts of such provision - which is very different from concluding it should stop!

Not all gardens are equal. An urban garden surrounded by concrete, with limited insect life and little natural food, is a very different environment to a rural one. For birds in those spaces, a garden feeder in spring and summer may be their most reliable food source of the year. Withdrawing it entirely, rather than improving how we feed, risks doing more harm than good.

The research points to hygiene and surface type as the primary transmission factors, not the food itself. Sick birds linger on flat, damp surfaces. Contaminated water spreads the parasite. Crowded feeders increase contact. These are solvable problems without stopping feeding altogether. The RSPB review itself suggests that for gardens attracting large numbers of finches, a more proportionate response may be "to moderate the volume of seed provision and/or the number of seed feeders in use" - not to stop feeding entirely.

Our position: feed all year round, but feed well. Clean feeders weekly, rotate locations, remove flat surfaces, keep food dry, and choose a quality no-mess seed. Responsible feeding, done with the right food, clean equipment, and a watchful eye, is unquestionably a positive for wild bird populations.