chipping-white-throated-sparrow at a feeding-table

For almost thirty years, the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology has been researching the subject of backyard bird feeding across the United States.  The research is based on the data annually collected by more than 20,000 volunteers participating in the laboratory’s Project FeederWatch.  During the 2015-2016 reporting period, some 164 Georgians took part in the survey.

The data collected by these citizen scientists provide us with a better understanding of a number of facets relating to bird feeding in the Peach State.  For example, it gives us some idea of the birds we are mostly likely to see at our backyard feeders.

Below you will find a list of the birds that showed up in the most backyards surveyed last year.  This list is based on the percentages of backyards visited at least once by a species. The bird that visited the most backyards was the northern cardinal (99%), The rounding out  the list are: Carolina chickadee (95%), tufted titmouse (95%), Carolina wren (93%), mourning dove (91%), house finch (88%), American goldfinch (85%), downy woodpecker (82%), red-bellied woodpecker (82%), blue jay (77%), eastern bluebird (71%), white-breasted nuthatch (71%), dark-eyed junco (70%), chipping sparrow (66%), eastern towhee (65%), brown thrasher (65%), pine warbler (65%), northern mockingbird (65%), brown-headed nuthatch (64%), American robin (63%), white-throated sparrow (60%), yellow rumped warbler (60%),  pine siskin (56%), song sparrow (55%), and American crow (50%).