Best Bird Seed for Tube Feeders — 5 That Never Clog

A tube feeder is a gravity column with holes in it, and that single fact decides what you can put in one. Seed has to be the right size to pass the port, dry enough not to cake, and regular enough in shape not to arch across the opening and stop.

Port size is the whole specification

Manufacturers do not always print it, but there are effectively two tube feeders on the market.

Get this wrong and the symptom is dramatic rather than subtle: either the tube empties onto the lawn overnight, or nothing comes out at all.

Bridging, and how to recognise it

Bridging is the characteristic tube-feeder failure. Irregular seed — fine chips, dusty seed, a mix with flaky bits in it — forms an arch across the port and takes the weight of the column above. The tube reads full from the window. Nothing is reachable.

A sharp tap on the side usually collapses it. If it happens repeatedly with the same bag, the seed is too fine or too dusty for that feeder and no amount of tapping fixes the cause.

The spoilage problem in a vertical column

A hopper sheds water and gets airflow. A tube does neither well. Rain drives in through the ports, soaks the seed nearest them, and the bottom of the tube never empties on its own because birds feed from the ports above it.

What forms down there is a sour, sometimes mouldy plug. Aspergillus mould on bird seed is not a cosmetic issue — it causes respiratory disease in birds, and a feeder is an efficient way to distribute it.

So:

• Fill small, fill often, rather than filling to the top once a fortnight
• Hang it where driving rain does not reach the ports if you can
• Choose in-shell over hulled in an exposed spot; hulled seed wets through much faster
• Empty and dry the tube completely at every clean, rather than topping up

What a tube feeder cannot do

It cannot feed cardinals, jays, doves, juncos or sparrows properly. Those birds are either too heavy for a two-inch perch or are ground foragers by habit. If your feeding list includes them, the tube is not the wrong feeder — it is simply not the whole feeder.

The cheap fix is a tray attachment that clamps under the tube. It catches the seed knocked out by the clinging birds, which stops the shell mat forming on the ground, and it gives heavier birds somewhere to sit. For roughly ten or twelve dollars it widens the species list more than any seed change will.

A two-feeder setup that covers almost everything

One standard tube of black oil sunflower with a tray under it, and one mesh tube of fresh nyjer. That pairing handles chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, house finches, goldfinches, woodpeckers, and — thanks to the tray — cardinals and jays.

Add safflower to the sunflower tube instead if squirrels take over, and accept a fortnight of reduced traffic while the birds learn the change.