Feeding garden birds is one of the great quiet pleasures of a British garden. A well-placed feeder turns a suburban lawn into a daily soap opera of squabbles and lets you watch species you would never otherwise see up close. But a feeder is not simply a feeder: a blue tit and a blackbird have completely different table manners, and matching the design to the bird is the difference between a busy station and a soggy, ignored lump of plastic.

Match the Feeder to the Bird

Before you buy anything, watch your garden for a week and note who turns up. Most British garden birds fall into three broad feeding styles, and each suits a different type of feeder.

• Clingers and acrobats — blue tits, coal tits, great tits and siskins. They will happily hang upside down on a lightweight tube and pick at ports.
• Perching finches and sparrows — goldfinches, greenfinches, chaffinches and house sparrows. They want a steady perch and a port they can sit at rather than cling to.
• Ground feeders — dunnocks, robins, blackbirds, song thrushes and, in many gardens, starlings. Some of these will never use a hanging feeder, however good it is.

Hang only one feeder and you will see tits and perhaps a goldfinch. Add a ground tray and a nyjer feeder and the whole cast turns up.

Hanging Seed Feeders

A good hanging seed feeder is a tube of UV-stable plastic or powder-coated metal, roughly 30cm tall, with feeding ports and a short perch beneath each one. Ports of 2–3mm suit sunflower hearts and small seeds; larger slots encourage wasteful raking and let the rain in.

Fill with sunflower hearts for the widest appeal and the least mess. Almost everything eats them, there are no husks to sweep up and nothing germinates under the feeder. A quality mix with millet and canary seed is fine too, but check the label: cheap mixes bulked out with wheat, split peas and dyed grain mostly end up on the lawn.

Hang feeders from a bracket or branch at least 1.5 metres up, clear of anywhere a cat can lurk. A baffle above the feeder keeps squirrels — and, in some gardens, jackdaws — off.

Nyjer Feeders for Finches

Nyjer is a tiny, high-oil seed that goldfinches, siskins and redpolls adore. It needs its own feeder: a slim tube with very fine slits rather than round ports, so the seed does not simply pour out. Buy one with a small base tray to catch spillage, because nyjer is expensive and a lot of it ends up on the grass otherwise.

It goes stale quickly once opened, so buy small quantities and use it within a couple of months. If goldfinches visit but ignore the nyjer feeder, try moving it higher and away from busier feeders; they are easily bullied off a crowded station.

Peanut Feeders and Suet

Peanuts are high in fat and protein and are taken by tits, nuthatches, great spotted woodpeckers and occasionally jays. Use a metal mesh feeder with holes around 6mm, which forces birds to take small pieces rather than whole nuts.

• Never put out whole peanuts in spring and early summer, when they can choke nestlings. Use peanut granules from March to July instead.
• Buy only peanuts sold for wild bird food, and reject any that smell musty or show dark mould. Aflatoxin from mouldy nuts can kill birds.
• Suet balls and cakes are brilliant winter fuel. Choose those in a sturdy metal cage rather than a loose net — netting traps legs and beaks and causes nasty injuries.

Ground Trays and Table Feeders

A ground tray, or a bird table with a raised rim, is the single best addition for a wildlife-friendly garden. It is where robins, dunnocks, blackbirds and song thrushes feed, and their jaunty hopping is half the pleasure of a winter morning.

Put out dried mealworms, suet sprinkles, mild grated cheese, chopped apple and a few raisins soaked in water. Avoid bread and milk, which fill birds up without nourishing them, and never put out salted or cooked leftovers. Site the tray on open grass a couple of metres from any shrub a cat could hide in, and lift it off the ground on short legs in wet weather.

Clean Regularly and Rotate Position

Hygiene is not optional. Dirty feeders spread trichomonosis, salmonella and avian pox, and one neglected tube can undo years of good work.

• Clean feeders every two weeks in dry weather and weekly in warm or wet spells, using hot soapy water and a bottle brush. Rinse thoroughly and dry fully before refilling.
• Use a bird-safe disinfectant if disease has broken out locally, wear gloves and wash your hands afterwards.
• Throw away any food that is damp, clumped or mouldy. Damp seed grows aspergillus, a fungus that damages birds' lungs.
• Move hanging feeders a metre or so every few weeks and sweep up hulls beneath them, so droppings and discarded seed do not build up in one spot.
• Keep bird baths topped up with clean water and scrub them out weekly.

Do all this and your garden becomes more than a feeding station — it becomes a reliable, safe part of the local landscape. Feeders work best alongside native planting, a scruffy corner and a good hedge, so the birds that come to eat also stay to nest.