The RSPB has asked people across the UK to stop filling garden feeders with seeds and peanuts until November. The charity set out the revised advice, which it calls “feed seasonally, feed safely,” in guidance published on 24 July 2026.
The pause runs from 1 May to 31 October each year. Small amounts of mealworms, fatballs and suet are still fine during those months, and the full range of foods goes back out from 1 November to 30 April.
Why the RSPB changed its advice
The trigger is trichomonosis, a parasite that attacks the mouth, throat and upper digestive tract. Infected birds struggle to swallow, and the RSPB compares the effect to a deadly, highly contagious throat infection.
Greenfinches have taken the worst of it. Their UK population has fallen by more than 65% over the last three decades, and the species has moved off the Green list onto the Birds of Conservation Concern Red list.
The Big Garden Birdwatch shows that collapse in plain numbers. Greenfinches ranked seventh in the top ten when the survey began in 1979. This year they came in at number 18.
Chaffinches have declined for the same reason, and the RSPB says Bullfinches may now be falling rapidly too. An evidence review found outbreak risk peaks in summer and autumn, because cold weather kills the parasite off.
Bird tables are out entirely
The blunt part of the new RSPB guidance has nothing to do with the calendar. The charity now advises against every flat-surface feeder — bird tables, window feeders and anything with a tray.
The reasoning is specific rather than precautionary. Birds sick with trichomonosis perch on flat surfaces to feed, then regurgitate food they cannot swallow, leaving contaminated material exactly where healthy birds pick it up.
Scrubbing does not fix this one. In a study of shared garden feeding sites, the parasite turned up on none of the 79 feeder surfaces tested, but it was detected on the food inside feeders, in base trays and on the ground below. The equipment is not the vector. The shared food is.
Your outdoor space is quiet right now for a different reason
Anyone acting on this in August will probably find the birds have already gone, and it is tempting to blame the empty seed feeder. Usually that is not the cause.
August is molt season. On the RSPB’s August question-and-answer page, wildlife adviser India James explains that garden birds molt once breeding finishes, and that shedding wing feathers leaves them less able to escape predators.
So they hide. Birds conceal themselves in vegetation to avoid both predators and territory disputes, which from a kitchen window looks like a disappearance.
The second reason works in the RSPB’s favor. Grain, berries and fruit ripen in late summer, so House Sparrows, Starlings and finches move out to fields and hedgerows where the food already is. Sussex Wildlife Trust puts a full molt at roughly six to eight weeks, with feathers replaced one at a time rather than all at once.
That is also the argument for planting rather than provisioning. The RSPB’s long-term recommendation is to fill an outdoor space with sunflowers, teasels and ivy so birds find their own food, and habitat beats any single feeder trick on almost every measure that matters.
What it changes if you also keep birds indoors
None of this guidance is aimed at companion birds, and nothing in it changes what goes in your cockatiel’s bowl. The overlap is narrower and more practical: the hands, scoops and brushes that move between a garden feeder and a bird room.
If you keep both at one address, service the outdoor feeders after your indoor birds rather than before, and never share utensils between the two. That sequencing is the cheap half of a seven-day reset that keeps the two routines apart.
Water needs the same discipline. The RSPB now says to offer water only if you can change it daily with tap water and disinfect the bath weekly — a standard that slips fastest in hot weather, which is where a safe setup turns into a disease hotspot without anyone noticing.
The molt is worth watching for its own sake. The seasonal daylight cue emptying UK gardens this month runs in your pet bird too, except household lighting scrambles the signal, which is why an indoor cockatiel’s molt ignores the calendar and often drags on for months.
Feathers are built from beta-keratin. The veterinarians at VCA Animal Hospitals note the extra demand a molt places on protein, calcium and iron, and that applies to the bird on your perch as much as the one in the hedge. If a molt looks patchy, one-sided or stalled, that is a question for an avian vet rather than a feeding change.
Where to get more
The RSPB’s step-by-step cleaning guide covers the method in detail: clean outside wearing gloves, dismantle the feeder, wash with hot soapy water, then disinfect with a non-toxic product or a mild 5% bleach solution.
If you see a sick bird at your feeders, the RSPB advises stopping feeding for at least three weeks and emptying any bird baths, restarting only once no birds are showing signs of disease.
Sick or dead garden wildlife can be reported to Garden Wildlife Health, a monitoring project run jointly by the Zoological Society of London, the British Trust for Ornithology, Froglife and the RSPB. The RSPB says its own advice may evolve as further research comes in.
Featured photo: Charles J. Sharp via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped to 16:9.