The best bird feed in 2023

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BBC Gardeners' World Magazine Product Guide bird feed

Bird food is a vital source of energy for birds. It feeds not only adult birds but also their chicks and makes birds bigger and stronger, ensuring a healthier population. It also means you’ll have birds visiting your garden all day long.

A host of different bird feed is available to provide for a wide variety of birds, all year-round. Mixed bird feed will feed insectivores, omnivores, and herbivorous birds alike. Alternatively, you can tailor your food to the birds you know visit your garden or that you hope to attract. Insectivores like house martins won’t go for sunflower hearts; conversely, wood pigeons won’t eat from feeders filled with mealworms.

Looking to support British Wildlife? Have a look at our guide to bird feeders or bird tables. Offer birds a home with our guide to bird nesting boxes and check up on your new wild companions with a bird box camera.

Browse our pick of bird food below:

Nutritious bird feeds for your garden

Peckish Natural Balance Seed Mix, 1.7kg

Peckish Natural Balance Seed Mix - BBC Gardeners' World Magazine — Peckish Natural Balance Seed Mix

This mixed bird food is perfect for supporting a wide variety of birds. It also has great green credentials - its packaging is entirely recyclable and contains no plastic.

Price: £4 for 1.7kg

Buy Peckish Natural Balance Seed Mix at Sainsbury's

Extra Select Premium Wild Bird Food

Five litres of seed for just £6.99 is a steal, and with eight different ingredients, this bird food is perfect for attracting a wide variety of birds. A great starting point for first-time use or gardeners on a budget.

Price: £9.79 for 1 litre

Buy Extra Select Premium Wild Bird Food on Amazon

RSPB Favourites blend bird food

RSPB Favourites Blend

The RSPB have combined their best-selling bird foods into this mix of ingredients. With sunflower hearts, a pellet mix of suet and raisins, and dried mealworms, this bird food is the avian equivalent of a full English: high-protein, high-calorie sustenance.

Price: £8 for 1.8kg

Buy RSPB Favourites at RSPB.org.uk

National Trust CJ Wildlife Hi-Energy No Mess Seed Mix

This seed mix is good for birds and good for your lawns and patios. With no wheat filler or husks, this bird food won’t leave debris all over your garden, but still provides great nutrition.

Price: £7.49 for 3 litres

Buy National Trust CJ Wildlife Hi-Energy No Mess Seed Mix at the National Trust

Peckish Complete Seed and Nut

This is an impressive mix of twelve different seeds and nuts. It's no-mess and is also vitamin fortified to help birds grow strong bones and produce robust eggshells. Great for attracting songbirds.

Price: £6.00 for 1.7kg

Buy Peckish Complete Seed and Nut from Robert Dyas, or Amazon

Seedzbox Ultimate Deluxe Wild Bird Seed Feed

This bird feed mix has a remarkable variety of ingredients. It’s designed to not only maximise the number of birds enjoying your garden, but to provide them with a diverse source of proteins and carbohydrates. This seed also donates to One Tree Planted, a non-profit which plants trees.

Price: £13.99 for 2kg

Buy Seedzbox Ultimate Deluxe Wild Bird Seed Feed at Amazon

RSPB No grow ground mix

This no-grow mix is good for fastidious gardeners. The mix has been selected and cut to lower the chance of this feed germinating in your garden. It's a hearty mix of suet, rolled oats and flaked maize - perfect for bigger songbirds like blackbirds.

Price: £3.75 for 900kg

Buy RSPB No grow ground mix at RSPB.org.uk

What should I feed the birds?

Bird foods can be split into four rough categories - insects, high-protein sources, seeds and grains, and berries.

Insects

Insects such as dried mealworms are great for most British birds, which are largely omnivorous. Dried or roasted mealworms are most common but waxworms, earthworms, and crickets are also fantastic unprocessed food sources, though they can be a little more expensive.

Protein sources

High-energy, high-protein food like sunflower hearts, suet or nuts are vital in winter. Just as for humans, proteins are crucial for helping birds build crucial muscle mass and body fat. However, in too large a quantity they can be unhealthy, so make sure you provide a healthy balance with different types of foods. It’s also good to make sure they’re in small pieces, so birds - especially chicks - don’t choke.

Seeds and grains

These are helpful all year round and are a mainstay of most birds’ diet. Try to avoid feed with wheat, because this has little nutritional value for birds and is used to bulk up feed - birds often won’t eat it either, and will dump it on the ground to get to tastier food. Keen gardeners will appreciate no-grow seeds, which have been roasted, cracked, or ground so that they don’t germinate in borders or lawns.

Berries

Birds and berries have a symbiotic relationship; berries give birds vital nutrients and vitamins, and birds excrete berry seeds so new shrubs and trees can grow. In areas without shrubbery or hedgerows, birds can miss out on this crucial part of their diet, so berries should be a mainstay of a good bird food. Mixed bird foods that include dried berries particularly suits robins, sparrows, and thrushes in late summer and autumn.

A less direct way to feed birds is in your gardening itself. Plants offer a fantastic opportunity to provide natural wild bird food as part of your wider garden design. Sunflowers and their seeds are a great source of protein, and holly and blackthorn provide invaluable berries year-round.

Where should I put bird food?

It’s best to put your feeder or bird table somewhere quiet, out of the reach of predators like cats or bigger birds. Bird food needs to be sheltered by greenery, both to protect birds from the weather and to give them a place to scout your feeder and check that they’re safe to feed. Read more tips on deterring cats from your garden.

When should I feed the birds?

It’s good to leave food out for birds year-round, but their needs do change with the seasons:

In Winter and Spring - the best bird food for winter and spring is heavy, protein-rich food like suet. In the colder seasons it's crucial that birds find high-energy snacks to feed themselves and their chicks.

In Summer and Autumn - lighter food like oats and millet are great for summer, when food is more plentiful and chicks are grown.

What shouldn't I feed wild birds?
Although some food from our kitchens is fine to give to birds, some should definitely be avoided:
Don’t feed birds big chunks of anything, because they can choke on the pieces. This is true for whole peanuts, desiccated coconut, and dry pieces of bread. Chop up your bird food to make it easier for them to eat.
Junk food like crisps or biscuit crumbs are also a choking hazard, as well as containing dangerous additives with little nutritional value. Salty food like bacon rinds are also potentially hazardous, because birds can’t process the high levels of salt in human food. So while birds love peanuts, use plain, unseasoned ones.
Milk causes gut problems in birds and although some can eat fermented dairy - robins love mild grated cheddar - it’s best to err on the side of caution and avoid dairy products.
Just as it does to humans, mouldy food can make birds ill. Make sure to store your bird food somewhere dry and clean out your bird feeder every few days to make sure food hasn’t gone off. This is especially important if you live in a city, or near water, as this food could attract rats.

This Product Guide was last updated in January 2023. We apologise if anything has changed in price or availability.