If you’ve been considering a bird feeder there are some features you will want to consider. Whether you incorporate suet balls for example, or a tray style feeder. Making a good bird environment is important as well, so people often include bird baths, and if you’re in a cold climate a bird bath deicer. But when it comes to the bird feeder which does the heavy lifting in the wild bird feeding world, it’s the cylinder bird feeder. In this article we’ll go over why cylinder bird feeders are one of the most common feeder types. We’ll also help you determine how to hang it if you don’t have a tree limb in a convenient location.
Best Cylinder Bird Feeder: Gray Bunny Metal Cylinder Feeder
- {SIX FEEDING PORTS}: Six well-spaced feeding ports with perches allows for multiple birds to feed simultaneously. Fit for Mix Seeds. This Bird feeders…
- {METAL BIRD FEEDER}: Metal feeding ports, lid and base are chew-proof, preventing Squirrel Damaging. Power Coated Metal makes the feeder rust-proof…
- {BIRD LOVER GIFTS}: A quality gift for parents, nature lovers and children. Maintaining the feeder by ensuring its well-stocked is an enjoyable…
Cylinder Bird Feeder Benefits And Downsides
Cylinder bird feeders have some obvious benefits when compared with the standard tray style feeders. One being the ease of knowing when you have to refill. If you have blue jays and a tray style bird feeder for example, you will notice they like to stand around the edge of the tray, and gorge themselves on seeds.
They will leave a mess of sunflower seed shells on the bird feeder itself. Also, oftentimes it’s hard to know whether you have a pile of seed shells, or you need to put more seed out. With a cylinder bird feeder, you don’t have this problem. The cylinder is emptied as the seeds are taken from the feeder. That way, a simple glance will tell you the status.
One drawback of the cylinder bird feeder is the social aspect. However, modern cylinder bird feeders like one of our favorites, the Gray Bunny, no longer only have a single or double hole. The majority have four holes or more giving multiple birds their own location to pull seeds from.
If you want to watch this process of seed removal, we’d always recommend installing your bird feeder in a location where you can easily see the birds feeding from a comfortable location indoors. This way you can enjoy ‘bird TV’ from the comfort of your sofa in the middle of winter.

What To Look For In A Cylinder Bird Feeder
When comparing cylinder bird feeders there are a few considerations which we feel are most important. The first being what is the capacity of the feeder? How much seed can you expect to pour in the feeder? The larger the capacity, the longer the period of time between refilling the seeds. Next, we’d always recommend looking at port quantity.
We like the modern cylinder feeders with 4 or 6 ports best as these provide an additional social aspect to the bird feeder. Next, you could consider the mesh walled cylinder bird feeders like the Aspects 281 which also comes with a squirrel protecting dome, preventing squirrel feeding from above.
The next consideration with any bird feeder, especially a cylinder shaped bird feeder, is hanging the bird feeder itself. Sometimes you have a convenient tree branch outside the window you want to hang the bird feeder from. But most of the time you’ll need a bird feeder pole to provide a safe location for the bird feeder.
Bird feeder poles can integrate squirrel proofing as well as the ability to hold multiple bird feeders and suet feeders. One of our favorite bird feeder poles is the Squirrel Stopper Sequoia which prevents squirrels from accessing the feeder while giving you four stations to hold cylinder bird feeders, tray style feeders or otherwise.
Best Cylinder Bird Feeders
Best Cylinder Bird Feeders Summary
When in the market for a cylinder shaped bird feeder, we recommend you compare the models available and consider the price point of each. There are often sales on cylinder bird feeders. Therefore, checking pricing is helpful. In this article, we’ve outlined some of our favorite models. Although, using our criteria, you can find a great bird feeder on your own as well.