If you’ve got a bird feeder hanging in your garden right now, there’s a good chance you think you’re doing the birds a favor. You filled it through winter. You watched the finches jostle for position. You topped it up in March, in April, maybe again last week. And now it’s May, the weather is warming, and the habit just… continues.
Here’s the uncomfortable news: that feeder you’re maintaining may be doing more harm than good. Not because the food is wrong, not because you’ve done anything incorrectly, but because the rules have changed. A deadly parasite has been quietly dismantling finch populations across Ireland and the UK for two decades, and garden feeders, particularly in the warmer months, have been one of the key ways it spreads. The advice that has guided bird lovers for years, that year-round feeding is fine, has now been formally reversed.
Pulling the feeder down in May feels counterintuitive. But that’s exactly what the science is pointing toward, and understanding why makes it a lot easier to do.
What Is Trichomoniasis, and Why Should You Care?
Trichomoniasis is the condition caused by Trichomonas gallinae, a protozoan (single-celled) parasite that has been around for a long time. It has historically caused a disease called “canker” in pigeons and doves, and “frounce” in birds of prey. For most of modern bird-feeding history, it stayed within those groups. Then something shifted.
Following initial reports from the UK in 2005, the disease established itself in finch populations across Ireland and many European countries. In recent years it has been seen to cause disease in finches, mostly greenfinch, chaffinch, and goldfinch. It has been speculated that the increase in the number of pigeons in gardens brought them into closer proximity with finches than they otherwise would have, providing the opportunity for the parasite to transfer and adapt to a new host.
The parasite makes it difficult for birds to eat, initially leading to difficulty swallowing. As birds struggle to eat they become colder and less energetic, with symptoms worsening over several days. Infected birds are inclined to fluff up their feathers more and are slower than others to fly away when disturbed. They often have bits of food stuck around their bill. If you’ve ever watched a bird at a feeder that seemed off, too still, too puffed up, too slow to scatter when you opened the door, that could be what you were seeing.
There is no practical treatment for wild birds with trichomoniasis, and it nearly always proves fatal within a couple of weeks.
The Population Damage Is Already Severe
This is not a theoretical risk. The losses are real and measurable. Irish Garden Bird Survey data shows that there was a decrease of more than 30% in garden visits by greenfinches during winter 2024/25 compared to ten years ago. The picture in the UK is even grimmer. Consequent to the emergence of finch trichomonosis, the breeding greenfinch population in Great Britain has declined from approximately 4.3 million to approximately 2.8 million birds, and the maximum mean number of greenfinches visiting gardens has declined by 50 per cent.
In 2021, conservationists moved greenfinches into the Red List category in the Birds of Conservation Concern report due to this severe decline. Chaffinch numbers have begun to decrease too, with 39% being lost between 2012 and 2022. For both species, the cause is the disease trichomonosis.
The British Trust for Ornithology describes trichomoniasis as “widely acknowledged to be the causal factor in the rapid decline of the British Greenfinch population.” Due to the magnitude of its population decline, greenfinch has become one of the few species in the UK to move directly from the lowest to the highest category of conservation concern, and the first to be listed because of infectious disease.
These are birds that were in almost every Irish and British garden within living memory. Greenfinches were recorded in around 90% of Irish gardens each winter in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since winter 2008/09 their numbers have fallen considerably, and by winters 2016/17 and 2017/18 they were only in 70% of gardens. The average peak flock size also dropped from around 7 birds per garden in the late 1990s to an average of just 3 in recent years.
Why Summer Feeders Make It Worse
The biology of this parasite explains exactly why warm-weather feeding creates such a problem. The parasite is transmitted between birds via their saliva, typically at shared food and water sources. It cannot live long outside a host, but can persist longer in damp conditions. That last detail is important. Damp, warm feeders in summer are a better environment for the parasite to survive long enough to reach the next bird.
As Niall Hatch of BirdWatch Ireland explained on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, “We know that garden feeders now are a vector for this, particularly during the warmer months of the year, which allows this disease to survive and thrive and pass the infection on.”
There is also a compounding problem specific to the breeding season. The birds that are infected shed the parasite in their saliva and droppings, contaminating food sources when they feed. And when adults regurgitate food, it can be passed directly to chicks. A parent bird carrying the parasite without yet showing symptoms can infect an entire nest. Feeders concentrate birds in one place, at one surface, at exactly the time of year when this transmission route is most active.
Finch trichomonosis occurs year-round; however, June to September have been observed to be the peak months for this condition.
The New Advice: Stop Feeding from May to October
BirdWatch Ireland is now advising people not to feed birds during the spring and summer months. The advice was issued to combat the spread of trichomoniasis. This is a significant reversal. Hatch said on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland: “Up until now people have always been doing things right. BirdWatch Ireland’s advice has always been that feeding birds year-round is okay. But we are changing that now because of this disease trichomoniasis, which affects finches in particular.”
The same guidance has come from the RSPB in the UK. Trichomonosis mainly affects seed-eating finches and is more common in summer and autumn. Because of this, the RSPB now recommends pausing feeding birds seeds or peanuts between 1 May and 31 October. You can continue to offer small amounts of mealworms, fatballs, or suet.
That last point is a meaningful nuance. The risk is specifically around seeds and peanuts, because finches flock to those foods and it is the finch species most devastated by trichomoniasis. Finches prefer to eat seeds, but when seeds aren’t available they will divert to peanuts. As finches rarely eat fatballs, suet, and mealworms, these foods are considered lower risk when it comes to the spread of trichomonosis.
So if you want to support insect-eating birds through the summer, a small amount of mealworms or suet is not the same risk as a full seed feeder.
The Misconception About Year-Round Feeding
There’s a deeply embedded assumption in garden bird culture that feeding year-round is an act of care and the more you do it, the better. That assumption is now overdue for a rethink.
At this time of year, food from garden feeders “makes up a tiny proportion” of a bird’s diet, according to Hatch. “At this time of year, there’s plenty of natural food around, and there’s also longer daylight hours, so there’s more time to find that food they need and birds are probably consuming far less than people think during summer and late spring.”
The period when feeding matters most is winter. The RSPB believes there is enough natural food available for garden birds between 1 May and 31 October. Natural food plants are at their peak during this time, and birds are expected to adapt to the removal of seed and peanut feeders in gardens.
Research published in Scientific Reports found that while large-scale supplementary bird feeding is carried out within at least 18 European countries, mostly in the north and west, the majority only do so during winter, whereas in the UK year-round feeding has been advocated in recent decades, with the supplementary feeding industry growing considerably. That year-round culture, however well-intentioned, may have contributed to the conditions in which this outbreak took hold.
What You Should Do With Your Feeder Right Now
Taking the feeder down is step one. But how you do it matters too, especially if birds have already been using it heavily this spring.
Feeders should be cleaned with a suitable disinfectant or mild bleach solution (5 to 10% solution), rinsed thoroughly, and allowed to air dry fully before being stored or used again. If you run multiple feeders, use them in different locations in your garden so that all birds aren’t congregating in a single place. And change feeder locations every few weeks to prevent a build-up of droppings in any one spot.
If you see a bird in your garden that looks like it might already be infected, the response is more urgent. The consensus among bird conservation experts is that it’s best to stop feeding or providing water in your garden for two to three weeks. This allows birds that normally congregate in your garden to disperse more widely in the countryside, making them less likely to encounter a sick bird. If you keep feeding, you’re attracting the sick bird, other infected birds not yet showing symptoms, and healthy birds into close proximity, which will undoubtedly cause the rest of the flock to become infected.
BirdWatch Ireland recommends feeding from November through the winter months and into April, but stresses that food should not be put on flat surfaces like traditional bird tables. Hanging feeders are safer than flat tables because they reduce the surface area contaminated by droppings, but in the summer months, even those should come down.
What to Grow Instead
The advice that comes through consistently from conservationists is that the best long-term alternative to a feeder is the garden itself. Hatch described planting native plant species as “a more effective way to help birds and gardens,” explaining that it supports the different seeds, fruits, berries, and insects that those birds thrive on. “That’s a really good way to provide even greater benefits for the birds in the garden.”
This matters practically. A garden stocked with native shrubs, berry-producing plants, and plants that support insect life will feed birds through spring and summer without ever concentrating them at a single contamination point. A teasel left to seed, a rowan in the corner, a stand of native grasses left uncut, all of these do what a feeder cannot: they disperse birds across the garden rather than funneling them to one spot.
The RSPB also recommends feeding only small amounts when you do feed in winter, not using feeders with flat surfaces, keeping feeders clean, and only putting out water if you can change it every day. That daily water change is something most feeders never manage consistently, and standing water in bird baths can be just as much of a transmission risk as the feeders themselves.
If you want to support wildlife through summer in a way that actually helps rather than harms, take a look at how your garden can provide habitat for birds and other wildlife through planting rather than provisioning.
The practical action this week is simple: bring the feeder in, clean it with a dilute bleach solution, let it dry thoroughly, and store it until November. Resist the urge to put it back out when you see birds looking around the spot where it used to hang. They will find food. What they cannot do is survive trichomoniasis once they have it.
A Garden That Feeds Birds Without Harming Them
There’s something quietly useful about shifting from “feeder gardener” to “habitat gardener.” The feeder habit can feel generous, but from May onward it’s the garden’s structure that does the real work.
A single rowan tree will attract thrushes and waxwings come autumn. Teasel, left standing through winter, brings goldfinches in without any human intervention. Native hedgerow plants like hawthorn and elder provide berries across a long season, long after a seed feeder would have gone empty or rancid. Aphid-covered stems attract blue tits in ways that a clean peanut feeder simply cannot match, because the insects go with the plant, not with the feeder.
You don’t need to convert your whole garden. A patch of native wildflowers left to set seed, a corner of rough grass that doesn’t get mowed until September, a shrub or two that produces berries rather than just flowers, these additions reduce your garden’s dependence on provisioning while removing the disease risk entirely. Birds will spread across that habitat rather than all competing for the same perch on the same hook.
The greenfinch that was in 90% of Irish gardens in the late 1990s is now in far fewer. The chaffinch is heading the same direction. Pulling the feeder down for six months is a small inconvenience compared to losing these birds from our gardens altogether. And the work you do now, planting things that genuinely support bird life through summer, will still be there when the feeder goes back up in November.
Read More: 14 Flowers That Attract More Birds to Your Yard
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