A cardinal moves through three to four hectares of habitat in his daily routine. He has, at most, four or five feeders in that area to choose from. Your yard is competing with the neighbours.

He does not pick the prettiest one or the most expensive one. He picks the one that does five things right.

The five things

1. Black-oil sunflower in a hopper or platform feeder. Not tubes with chickadee-sized perches.
2. Dense shrub cover within three metres of the feeder. Holly, hawthorn, juniper, dogwood, multiflora rose.
3. Water at ground level, kept clean, ideally with a heater in winter.
4. Native fruit-bearing shrubs for autumn carotenoid intake.
5. Daily restocking. A reliable food source is the only kind a cardinal will commit to.

If you only do one thing, do the first one. If you can do two, add the shrub. The other three multiply the effect.

Why each one matters

Seed

Cardinals have heavy conical bills built for cracking sunflower. Tube feeders with small perches are sized for chickadees and titmice. A cardinal arrives, finds nothing to grip, and leaves.

Seed	Cardinal takes it
Black-oil sunflower (in shell)	First choice. Reliable.
Safflower	Strong second. Excludes squirrels and grackles.
Sunflower hearts	Eaten readily, no shell waste, more expensive per kilo of usable food
Striped sunflower	Eaten, slower to crack than black-oil
Cracked corn	Taken on the ground, not preferred at the feeder
Peanut hearts	Occasionally
Milo	Will pick this out and discard it
Nyjer	Ignored, bill too big

The reliable single-bag answer is black-oil sunflower in the shell. It is also the cheapest per kilogram of bird-grade seed in most US markets. Cheap mixed seed is the most expensive way to feed a cardinal because most of the bag goes to waste.

Feeder

What works:

• Hopper feeder with a perch ring or wide tray.
• Platform feeder with a roof, pole-mounted or hanging.
• Ground tray at the base of a shrub.

What does not:

• Tube feeders with small perches.
• Suet cages (cardinals land awkwardly and usually leave).
• Window feeders sized for chickadees.

Cover

A cardinal will not feed in the open. He wants a flight to dense cover within seconds. Six to ten feet from the feeder is ideal.

Best cover plants:

• Evergreen. Yew, holly, juniper, arborvitae.
• Dense deciduous. Multiflora rose, blackberry, dogwood, hawthorn, viburnum.
• Climbing tangles. Honeysuckle, wild grape, Virginia creeper on a trellis.

A feeder mid-lawn with no cover gets a brief dawn or dusk visit at best. Move it within three metres of a shrub and the use pattern shifts within a week.

Water

Cardinals bathe daily. Often more in summer. A ground-level dish or low pedestal birdbath, kept clean, is one of the strongest single attractants in the toolkit.

• Rim depth 2 to 3 cm, rising to 5 cm at the centre.
• Rough or textured surface for grip.
• Refilled every day or two.
• A small dripper or bubbler doubles the visit rate of every species, not just cardinals.

In winter the water is more important than the food. A bird that cannot bathe cannot keep his feathers compressed and waterproof, which means he cannot insulate properly. A heated birdbath, around 60 watts at the bottom of an existing bath, costs the price of a few coffees per winter to run.

Native fruit

Sunflower will hold a cardinal pair through summer. In autumn and winter, native fruit extends the feeding window and supports nesting later. The carotenoids in native fruit are also the pigments that produce the next spring’s red plumage in the male. A garden full of dogwood, sumac and serviceberry produces brighter cardinals.

Top performers:

• Dogwood (Cornus species)
• Serviceberry (Amelanchier)
• Wild grape (Vitis)
• Hackberry (Celtis)
• Mulberry (Morus)
• Sumac (Rhus)
• Blackberry, raspberry (Rubus)

See Plants that attract Northern Cardinals.

Restocking

Cardinals memorise feeder routes. A bird that finds your feeder reliably stocked in November adds it to his daily route through the winter. A bird that finds it empty for a week drops it from the route and may not come back.

Stock daily. Top up before storms. Keep the seed dry. Replace mouldy seed.

The cardinal’s seasonal schedule

Season	What he wants
Spring	Sunflower, mealworms for nesting females taking protein, native nesting cover
Summer	Sunflower, fresh water, dense cover for the second and third broods
Autumn	Sunflower, safflower, native fruit ripening
Winter	Sunflower, suet (will be visited), water above freezing

For the winter-specific version see What to feed cardinals in winter.

Common pitfalls

• Tube feeders with short perches. Switch to a hopper.
• Mid-lawn placement with no cover. Move within three metres of a shrub.
• Cheap seed mix. Padded with milo, wheat and red millet that cardinals ignore.
• Empty feeder for weeks. Cardinals drop it from the route.
• Free-roaming cats. Will end cardinal visits within a week. The single most destructive backyard variable for bird abundance, comprehensively. A 2013 study in Nature Communications by Loss and colleagues estimated that free-roaming domestic cats kill 1.3 to 4.0 billion birds annually in the United States. Cardinals are not exempt.

How long it takes

First sighting after putting a feeder up is typically two to six weeks. The bird is cautious by nature and is also adding the new feeder to a memorised route, which takes time. To speed this up:

• Scatter seed on the ground near the feeder for the first week.
• Put the feeder where you have already seen cardinals nearby.
• Keep the seed fresh.
• Be patient.

A yard that holds a cardinal pair for a decade is a yard where the feeder is full every morning, the water is clean, the dogwood has been there longer than the homeowner, and the cat lives indoors.