What’s Really Going On at Your Bird Feeder? Watch for These Clues

When birds visit your feeder, they’re doing a lot more than just feeding. They’re coming and going, watching for openings or threats, and interacting with each other in a well-established social pecking order.

At first it looks like just a flurry of activity—but watch closely and you’ll start to see a daily struggle of dominance playing out in your backyard.

Some types of dominant or submissive behavior are easy to pick out with a little practice, and this can give you a little inside information on your feeder birds. Watch for when one bird changes its posture in the presence of another, or how some birds preemptively give up their spot when another bird approaches. Here’s a quick primer on some of the most common moves.

One of the most common and easiest to see behaviors, displacement occurs anytime one bird leaves to get out of the way of another bird. Displacement also plays out when one bird waits nearby for another to finish eating before flying over to a feeder. Within the same species, generally speaking, males tend to dominate females and older birds dominate younger ones. Feeder hierarchies can also involve birds of several species, with the larger species usually winning out over the smaller.

Sometimes a dominant bird doesn’t need to displace a subordinate to exert influence. Watch for specialized threat displays designed to convey aggressive intent, such as a chickadee’s bill-up display in which the bird tilts its bill straight up. You’ll also often see dominant White-breasted Nuthatches giving a characteristic threat display in which the bird partially fans its wings and sways side-to-side in the direction of its opponent. This can be a subordinate bird or sometimes a predator. (See the accompanying video, in which a male nuthatch performs a wing-spread display as he faces off against a red squirrel that’s too near his nest box.)

Watch the posturing play out as these two Blue Jays attempt to share a platform feeder. The first bird you see in the video turns out to be the dominant one; when another jay arrives, it’s almost immediately chased off. When it returns, the two birds circle the feeder, with the dominant bird lunging repeatedly at the other. During all this squabbling, notice how the aggressive bird has its body feathers fluffed up and its crest partially raised. In contrast, the subordinate bird is sleeked down and is constantly adjusting its position to put distance between it and its rival.

And there’s a bonus behavior to look for—both these jays seem to be eating sunflower seeds nonstop, without even shelling them. They’re most likely storing these seeds in a special throat pouch, and will cache them for later after they fly away. The throat feathers look shaggy because that seed-filled pouch is starting to bulge out.

This last video ties together several different interactions. It starts with a female Hairy Woodpecker foraging at center. A female Red-bellied Woodpecker flies up to the left-hand feeder, sending a Common Grackle packing. Moments later, a male Hairy Woodpecker displaces the female Hairy from the suet feeder. Red-bellied and Hairy Woodpeckers are evenly matched in size, so when the Red-bellied lunges over onto the suet feeder there’s a showdown. At first the male Hairy backs away, then raises its head feathers in aggression. Neither woodpecker backs down and so the conflict escalates with some aggressive pecks. Finally, the two woodpeckers choose opposite sides of the feeder and the conflict resolves. Meanwhile, just inches away, Blue Jays and Red-winged Blackbirds seem to forage unperturbed.