Songbirds of Montclair

Montclair’s mix of mature street trees, wooded backyards, and hedgerows supports a surprising variety of songbirds year-round, with even more passing through during spring and fall migration.

Most of what you hear in a Montclair backyard — the dawn chorus, the cardinal’s whistle, the chickadee’s call — comes from a small set of species that have adapted well to a leafy suburban town. Below are the ones you’re most likely to see and hear, what they eat, and the trees that keep them coming back.

Most common songbirds in town

• American Robin. The classic lawn bird, seen tugging earthworms from grass and, later in the season, stripping berries from shrubs and trees. Present year-round, though flocks are less visible in winter.
• Northern Cardinal. A year-round resident whose bright red males and sharp chip call are hard to miss. Cardinals favor dense shrubs and forage on seeds, fruit, and insects close to the ground.
• Black-capped Chickadee. Small, curious, and constantly active in tree canopies and at feeders, chickadees eat insects and insect eggs through spring and summer and switch to seeds in colder months.
• Blue Jay. Bold, loud, and often responsible for planting oak trees — jays cache acorns by the hundreds each fall, and the ones they forget become seedlings.
• House Finch. A common feeder bird with a warbling song, house finches eat mostly seeds and buds and nest readily in evergreens and hanging planters.
• American Goldfinch. Bright yellow in summer, olive in winter, goldfinches are strict seed-eaters and nest later than most songbirds, timed to when native plants like coneflower and aster go to seed.
• Song Sparrow. A streaky, ground-foraging bird with a distinctive, varied song, common in hedgerows and along the brushy edges of yards and parks.
• Gray Catbird. Named for its cat-like mewing call, the catbird skulks in dense shrubs and thickets and is a heavy consumer of berries in late summer and fall.
• Carolina Wren. A small, loud, year-round resident that nests in brush piles, dense vines, and even hanging planters, and forages almost entirely on insects and spiders.
• Baltimore Oriole. A vivid orange-and-black summer visitor, orioles favor tall shade trees for nesting and are drawn to nectar, ripe fruit, and caterpillars.

What not to do

Some of the most effective things you can do for backyard birds are things you stop doing. A yard that looks tidy and well-kept to us can be close to empty from a bird’s point of view.

• Skip the pesticides. Insects are not a problem to be solved in a bird-friendly yard — they are the food supply. Nearly all songbirds feed their nestlings caterpillars and other insects, and a single clutch of chickadees can take thousands of caterpillars before fledging. Broad-spectrum insecticides remove that food, and treated plants can stay toxic to insects long after spraying. The same goes for mosquito-spraying services, which kill pollinators and the insects birds depend on along with the mosquitoes.
• Skip the rodenticides. Rat and mouse poisons move up the food chain into hawks, owls, and foxes that hunt in your yard. See our Q&A for what to do about rodents instead.
• Don’t clear every leaf and stem. Fallen leaves shelter the insects and caterpillar pupae that birds forage in early spring, and seed heads left standing feed goldfinches and sparrows through winter. Leaving beds uncut until late spring costs nothing and feeds a lot.
• Keep cats indoors. Free-ranging domestic cats kill an estimated 1.3–4.0 billion birds a year in the U.S., likely the largest single source of human-caused bird mortality. A well-fed cat still hunts, and a bell on the collar doesn’t reliably stop it. Loss, Will & Marra, “The impact of free-ranging domestic cats on wildlife of the United States,” Nature Communications 4:1396 (2013).
• Make windows visible. Large reflective panes read as open sky to a flying bird. Exterior screens, decals or dot patterns spaced a few inches apart, or cords hung outside the glass all cut collisions substantially.

Bird feeders: the trade-offs

Feeders are the first thing most people reach for, and they are genuinely enjoyable — they bring birds close, and they help during hard winter stretches and cold snaps. But they come with real costs worth weighing honestly.

• Check what’s on the seed. Some agricultural seed is treated with neonicotinoid pesticides, which are toxic to birds in small quantities and persist in the seed itself — and seed sold for feeders isn’t always clearly labeled. Buy from suppliers who state their seed is untreated, and if the packaging doesn’t say, call the company and ask directly what the seed is coated with.
• Disease is the main concern. Feeders concentrate many birds at one surface, which spreads salmonellosis, house finch eye disease, and other infections that wouldn’t pass between birds foraging naturally. If you keep a feeder, clean it every one to two weeks with a dilute bleach solution and rake up spilled seed underneath. If you see a sick or lethargic bird, take the feeder down for a couple of weeks.
• Feeders attract more than birds. Spilled seed draws rodents, which in turn draws neighbours toward rodenticides — the exact chain that poisons hawks and owls. Squirrels, bears, and rats are all part of the picture in a town like ours.
• Placement matters for windows and cats. Counterintuitively, feeders within about three feet of a window are safer than ones placed farther out, because birds can’t build up lethal speed. Keep feeders well away from shrubs a cat can hide in.
• Feeders don’t replace habitat. Seed feeds a narrow set of species and provides almost nothing for the insect-eaters raising young. A yard with native plantings and no feeder supports more birds than a yard with a feeder and nothing growing.

If you enjoy feeding birds, keep it — just keep it clean, and treat it as a supplement to habitat rather than a substitute for it. If you’d rather do one thing, plant a native tree or shrub.

Found a bird in need of rescue?

Clear advice from the Raptor Trust.

Most songbirds people find on the ground are not actually in trouble. Fledglings — young birds with short tails and stubby wings, hopping and fluttering on the ground — are a normal stage of development. The parents are almost always nearby, still feeding and watching over them, even though they aren’t visible.

• A fully feathered bird hopping on the ground is usually fine. Keep pets and people away and give it space; it will fly within a few days.
• A featherless or mostly bare nestling that has fallen from a nest can often be placed back in the nest, or in a small basket wired near the original nest, if the nest is visible and reachable.
• A bird that is bleeding, has an obviously broken wing, was caught by a cat, or is cold and unresponsive needs professional help right away.

For contact numbers and full guidance on what to do — and what not to do — see our injured or displaced wildlife page.