If you’re hoping for a flurry of avian activity in your garden this summer, then don’t feed the birds.
That’s the official advice from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which has warned against filling your garden bird feeders with seeds and peanuts between May and October, as warmer temperatures can turn them into disease hotspots.
This guidance follows an RSPB review, which found “strong evidence that supplementary feeding promotes the spread of diseases in gardens, including the trichomonosis parasite.”
Trichomonosis – also known as “blown-up finch disease” – is a deadly avian affliction that makes it difficult for birds to eat or breathe and has killed off an estimated six million greenfinches and chaffinches in recent years. Infected birds shed the parasite in their faeces and saliva, contaminating food sources when they eat. As an estimated nine birds eat from a single feeder, they can be major sources of the spread – a risk little-known by the 16 million UK households thought to put out feed on a regular basis.
Here’s how to safely feed birds in your garden this summer – without feeders – according to experts.
Grow ‘natural’ feed
The RSPB advice, although stringent, should encourage the green-fingered among us to “just see living plants as bird feeders, rather than hanging a [specific] bird feeder up,” says Arthur Parkinson, gardening writer and author of Planting a Paradise.
“The wonderful thing about this time of year is that there are so many things to grow to feed birds”, – including Amaranthus, “which is that wonderful octopus-like foliage; [and] all the panicum varieties of grasses are really popular with our finches,” Parkinson says.
Wildflowers that produce fruiting trees, like crabapple, “are just brilliant,” adds Jack Wallington, garden designer and author of A Greener Life, “because you get the flowers in spring for insects, but also small fruits in autumn and winter that the birds can feed on.”
These include spiky plants such as blackthorn (sloe) and hawthorn, while rowan, elderflower and guelder rose also produce food for birds to eat through autumn and early winter, as they ripen at different times. Along with the berries themselves, “if you concentrate on habitat for all wildlife, you’re going to get lots of insects, and insects are one of the primary food sources for birds.” Natural feeding also discourages the likes of squirrels and rats (who can introduce pathogens to feeders), “so it is quite win-win,” says Parkinson.
Focus on hydration
“What the RSPB would be better off telling people is not necessarily [to] stop feeding the birds, but please give the birds water, because with climate change, what our birds need, particularly songbirds, are bird baths,” Parkinson explains.
“Do a bird bath and clean out every day and the birds will still visit your garden and bathe and drink, and it will still be a lovely thing to enjoy in the garden.” He advises placing baths somewhere that isn’t completely exposed; he keeps his under the garden table, so that sparrow hawks, which almost exclusively eat other birds, can’t swipe them as they bathe.
If you have the space, a pond is one step better, says Wallington, who advises creating one with “a shallow sloping edge so wildlife can get in and out.” The size of a pond, compared to a bath, far reduces the likelihood of a bird interacting with infected matter left behind by another.
Go for cover
“The best thing for a garden is a hedge,” Parkinson explains, as these are a boon for fruit and shelter. Yet we have lost more than half of our hedgerows in the last 50 years. If you’ve replaced your hedgerows with fences, “plant clematis and honeysuckle up your fences and that lovely clinging hydrangea, and then the fence will become almost a fake hedge for the birds.”
For a good summer, don’t forget about winter
It’s important to feed birds over the winter months in order to build up their fat reserves, which keep them warm and healthy, and able to seek out food. The RSPB says that, given natural food like berries and insects can be in shorter supply during cold months, continuing to give them small amounts of mealworms, suet and fatballs (which they are less keen on than seeds and peanuts) is safe.
This can continue into spring, as the March-April period can be a “hungry gap” for birds, in which scarcity of food hampers their survival.
Ditch pesticides
Across the UK, parks, playgrounds and pavements were sprayed with more than 350 tonnes of pesticides in 2024, according to figures from the Pesticide Action Network – the equivalent of 23 double-decker buses. These were mostly used to remove unwanted plants, often for cosmetic reasons – despite how vital the likes of wildflowers (often dismissed as ‘weeds’) are for animal species. “We know that all herbicides and pesticides are just lethal to us and all life on earth,” Parkinson says. “Chemicals in gardens are killing nature, so we need to just blanket ban them.”
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