Texas picked the Northern Mockingbird in 1927, and unlike most states, Texas picked a bird that does turn up at feeders.
It just does not turn up as much as you would expect. The mockingbird sits at 54% of Texas feeders — ninth on the list, well behind four or five birds most people could not name. Mockingbirds are not really seed birds; they want fruit and insects, and they spend more energy defending a territory than working a feeder.
Here is what is actually out there.
The twelve birds Texas feeders report most
From Project FeederWatch, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's winter count, in which volunteers record what turns up at their own feeders. The 2023–24 season had 651 participants in Texas. The percentage is the share of Texas feeder sites that reported the bird at least once.
| # | Bird | Share of TX feeders |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northern Cardinal | 91.3% |
| 2 | Carolina Chickadee | 82.1% |
| 3 | House Finch | 74.3% |
| 4 | White-winged Dove | 70.6% |
| 5 | Carolina Wren | 65.5% |
| 6 | Blue Jay | 64.3% |
| 7 | Mourning Dove | 57.6% |
| 8 | House Sparrow | 55.5% |
| 9 | Northern Mockingbird | 54.1% |
| 10 | American Goldfinch | 50.2% |
| 11 | Downy Woodpecker | 45.5% |
| 12 | Chipping Sparrow | 44.9% |
Four things in that list worth knowing
Texas has two doves, and the loud one is winning
White-winged Dove is fourth, ahead of the Mourning Dove at seventh. Fifty years ago that would have been unthinkable — White-wings were a south Texas bird. They have moved north through the state's towns and cities since, and they are now the dove at most Texas feeders.
Telling them apart is easy once you know: the White-winged Dove has a hard white stripe along the folded wing and a squared-off tail. The Mourning Dove has no stripe, a long pointed tail, and the whistling wings on takeoff.
The chickadee here is the Carolina, not the Black-capped
At 82% it is the second most reported bird in the state. Carolina and Black-capped Chickadees look nearly identical, and the Black-capped simply does not occur in most of Texas — so whatever else it is, the little black-capped bird at your feeder is almost certainly a Carolina.
The cardinal is at nine feeders out of ten
91.3%, first by a wide margin, and present all year — cardinals do not migrate. In the Rio Grande Valley you may also get the Pyrrhuloxia, which is what a cardinal would look like if it were made of grey stone with red trim.
Goldfinches show up looking wrong
American Goldfinch makes the top ten at 50%, but almost entirely in winter plumage — dull olive-buff, no black cap, nothing like the lemon-yellow bird in the field guide. Plenty of Texans report them as an unidentified brown finch.
What is on our Texas mug, and where each bird actually ranks
Straight answer, so there are no surprises.
The Backyard Birds of Texas mug is drawn with the Northern Cardinal (#1, 91%), the House Finch (#3, 74%), the Carolina Wren (#5, 65%) and the Mourning Dove (#7, 58%). All four are in the Texas top seven.
One honest note: the dove on the mug is the Mourning Dove, and in much of Texas the dove you actually get is the White-winged. Both are common; the White-winged is more common. It is on the list of illustrations we still owe this state.
If you want more of them
Black-oil sunflower seed suits the cardinal, the chickadee, the House Finch and the wren all at once. Safflower is worth knowing about in Texas: cardinals eat it happily, and grackles and House Sparrows mostly do not — which is how you get the feeder back.
Water matters more here than seed. In a Texas August a shallow dish, refilled daily, will out-pull anything you can put in a feeder.
Where these numbers come from: Project FeederWatch, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Top 25 Feeder Birds for Texas, 2023–24 season. These are volunteer reports from their own feeders, not a formal survey, and they describe the winter feeding season rather than the whole year. Percentages are the share of participating sites that reported the species. Texas state bird designation: 1927.
See the mugs for the other states → · Identify a bird in three questions →