Summer is a fantastic season to watch out for colorful visitors to your feeders, such as Orioles, Grosbeaks, and Hummingbirds. July is also a great time to watch for young birds which have fledged the nest. They will come to feeders trailing after their parents, who are still feeding them and showing them how to find and catch food. They can be seen begging their parents for food by holding their beaks open, quivering their wings and making specialized “begging” calls, which are high-pitched and may roughly sound like “feed me, feed me, feed me”!, which is a helpful mnemonic to recognize these calls. By the time they fledge the nest, they have grown to be as large as their parents, but they still have additional nutritional needs. Foods high in protein and calcium help the fledglings to solidify their bones (a process known as ossification) and to replace the downy feathers they grew for insulation in the nest with new, sturdier feathers. Foods that are most beneficial to fledgling feather and bone growth include Bark Butter, Nesting Blend, and FeatherPro blends.

European Starlings, an invasive species which aggressively push out native cavity-nesting species such as Eastern Bluebirds, can become an issue during the summer, when the adults are leading swarms of their young to feeders, swamping out the native bird species. These birds can be recognized by their glossy, iridescent coat and yellow, spearlike beak, with the young being gray with speckles (as shown below). A few solutions to exclude these birds include putting cages around feeders, feeding safflower and Simply Suet, and upside-down suet feeders. Cages will also exclude larger native birds such as Cardinals and Grosbeaks. However, these species both enjoy safflower, so a good compromise is to fill one feeder with safflower without a cage for the Cardinals and Grosbeaks to enjoy, and put non-safflower feeders (such as finch feeders) inside cages. These birds will become less of an issue after July, when other food sources become more plentiful.