Bird Feeding Laws in Oregon: What Every Backyard Birder Needs to Know

You can hang a suet feeder in your Salem backyard without a permit, but toss bread to ducks at a city pond in Cannon Beach and you could be looking at a $500 fine. Feeding wild birds laws in Oregon aren’t found in one tidy state statute — they’re scattered across wildlife codes, bear-attractant rules, and dozens of local ordinances that treat songbirds, waterfowl, and bears very differently.

Before you fill another feeder, it helps to know which rules apply to your city, your yard, and the species actually showing up. This breakdown covers what’s legal statewide, where city rules take over, and how bear season, HOAs, and park regulations each add another layer most backyard birders never see coming.

Important Note: This article summarizes publicly available Oregon statutes and municipal codes as of August 2026 for general information. It isn’t legal advice — confirm current rules with your city’s code enforcement office or the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife before acting.

Is It Legal to Feed Wild Birds in Oregon

Oregon has no single statute that legalizes or bans feeding wild birds statewide. Instead of one clear-cut bird feeding law, the state relies on a mix of wildlife statutes and hundreds of separate city and county ordinances, so what’s allowed in Bend can look very different from what’s allowed in Cannon Beach.

At the state level, ORS 496.731 only restricts feeding for what it calls potentially habituated wildlife — bear, cougar, coyote and wolf — not songbirds. That means putting out sunflower seed for chickadees and finches is legal under state law almost everywhere you go in Oregon, provided you’re not also drawing in larger, more dangerous animals.

Cities fill in the rest of the picture, and many have adopted nearly identical language. Cannon Beach’s ordinance still lets residents feed songbirds as long as they use a secure container that prevents access from other animals, while violators of the city’s broader wildlife-feeding ban face a misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $500. Dundee, Burns, and Warrenton use the same basic exception: feeding birds is fine as long as the feeder keeps out raccoons, deer, and other wildlife.

Pro Tip: Before setting up a feeder in a new city, search your city’s wildlife-feeding ordinance or call the local planning department. Coastal and bear-country cities tend to have stricter rules than inland suburbs.

Bird Feeder Placement and Height Rules in Oregon

Unlike states that set an exact minimum height for legal bird feeders, Oregon’s ordinances focus on function rather than a specific number of feet. The standard repeated almost word-for-word across city codes requires that a feeder be reasonably designed to avoid access by wild animals and placed in a manner to avoid access by wild animals, per Dundee’s municipal code. In practice, the feeder’s design determines whether you’re in compliance, not a ruler.

That performance-based standard gives you flexibility, but it also puts the burden on you to prove the setup actually excludes other wildlife. Most Oregon birders still follow the same practical approach: a pole-mounted feeder roughly five to six feet off the ground, fitted with a squirrel baffle, and positioned at least ten feet from fences, decks, or branches a predator could use as a launch point.

Placement matters for reasons that have nothing to do with wildlife law, too. Feeders set too close to windows contribute to fatal bird strikes, and feeders placed where outdoor cats can stalk from cover turn a backyard buffet into an ambush site. Neither scenario is illegal on its own, but both undercut the reason you’re feeding birds in the first place.

Feeding Waterfowl: Ducks, Geese, and Special Restrictions in Oregon

Waterfowl get treated differently than backyard songbirds almost everywhere in Oregon, and for good reason. ODFW is blunt about it: do not feed geese and ducks, because feeding can create a concentration problem and invites disease outbreaks. Crowding dozens of Canada geese (Branta canadensis) onto one pond with bread or corn accelerates the spread of avian influenza and other pathogens that move quickly through dense flocks.

Several municipal ordinances write that distinction directly into law. Burns’ city code exempts feeding birds, other than waterfowl, utilizing a bird feeder that can be accessed only by birds — meaning the songbird-feeder exception that protects your chickadee feeder doesn’t extend to ducks at the neighborhood pond. If you’re tossing bread to mallards at a city park, you’re likely outside the legal exception even if a similar feeder for finches would be fine.

This distinction matters most in parks, golf courses, and apartment complexes with ponds, where geese already generate property complaints over grass damage and droppings. Migratory waterfowl also fall under a separate layer of protection that has nothing to do with feeding, which is worth knowing if you want to understand how migrating birds move through Oregon each year.

Bear-Attractant Laws That Affect Bird Feeders in Oregon

This is where Oregon’s bird feeding rules get their sharpest teeth. Feeding black bears (Ursus americanus) outright is illegal under state law, and Ashland’s city guidance confirms that feeding bears is also illegal under Oregon state law (ORS 496.730) and the Ashland Municipal Code, with a $500 fine. The catch for backyard birders is that the law doesn’t require intent — a bird feeder that unintentionally feeds a bear can still trigger enforcement.

Oregon State Police and ODFW have repeatedly reminded residents in bear country that knowingly feeding bears is against Oregon state law (ORS 496.730) and can lead to habituated bears that become a human safety threat. Their standing advice for anyone in an active bear area is direct: take down every feeder, including hummingbird feeders, and sweep up any seed on the ground, because there is plenty of natural food for birds at that time of year. That guidance matters if you maintain hummingbird feeders in Oregon, since sugar-water feeders draw bears just as readily as suet or seed.

Ashland flags bear season as running roughly from July to November, when bird feeders are a significant attractant. The consequences of ignoring that window can be severe for the animal, not just the resident. In one widely reported case, a young bear near Cottage Grove that residents had repeatedly fed kept turning up near homes over several weeks before it became food-conditioned and lost its fear of people; ODFW ultimately had to euthanize it. Oregon isn’t alone in tightening these rules — neighboring Washington enforces its own wildlife-attractant restrictions built on similar bear-safety logic.

Important Note: Bear-attractant rules apply even if you never intended to feed a bear. Spilled seed, unsecured suet, and overnight hummingbird nectar can all count as illegal attractants under ORS 496.730 and ORS 496.731.

HOA and Municipal Bird Feeding Restrictions in Oregon

Because Oregon leaves most details to local government, the ordinance in your specific city often matters more than any statewide rule. Several cities have adopted nearly identical “attracting or feeding wild animals” chapters, but the fine print — and the fines themselves — vary enough that it pays to check your city code directly.

City	Songbird Feeder Allowed?	Waterfowl Feeding Allowed?	Maximum Penalty
Cannon Beach	Yes, in a secure container	No	$500 misdemeanor
Dundee	Yes, wildlife-proof feeder	No	$250 fine
Burns	Yes, bird-only feeder	No, explicitly excluded	Public nuisance citation
Ashland	Yes, but discouraged in bear season	No	$500 fine (bear-related)

Homeowners associations add a separate layer that doesn’t have to mirror any city ordinance. An HOA’s covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) can prohibit pole-mounted feeders, cap feeder size, or ban feeding altogether in shared common areas, even in cities where the practice is otherwise legal. This is the same mechanism many Oregon HOAs use to restrict backyard chickens or backyard beekeeping — the city permits the activity, but your neighborhood association doesn’t have to.

If you live under an HOA, its governing documents take precedence over the city ordinance whenever they’re more restrictive. Read your CC&Rs before you install a permanent feeder pole, since removal after the fact is far more disruptive than checking first.

Feeding Birds on Public Land or Parks in Oregon

The city ordinances that govern your backyard almost always apply to public parks within that same city, and in practice they’re often stricter. A hand-held bag of bread crumbs doesn’t meet the “feeder reasonably designed to avoid access by wild animals” standard most Oregon cities require, which makes casual duck-and-goose feeding at a public pond one of the most common ways residents unknowingly break local wildlife-feeding ordinances.

State wildlife areas and refuges layer on additional restrictions. ORS 496.731’s feeding exceptions cover only narrow cases — research or management programs, licensed waste disposal facilities, and zoos or permitted wildlife rehabilitators — so an ordinary park visitor scattering seed for waterfowl or gulls doesn’t qualify for any of them. ODFW has reminded Oregonians that food waste is one of the strongest attractants for black bears, and allowing bears access could qualify as illegal feeding if appropriate steps aren’t taken to prevent it — a warning that applies just as much to a picnic table in a state park as it does to a backyard.

Dogs complicate the picture further, since a pet chasing shorebirds or waterfowl in a park can trigger a separate citation entirely. If you’re bringing a dog on a birdwatching trip, review Oregon’s leash laws beforehand, since most park wildlife-protection rules assume pets stay leashed near nesting or feeding areas.

Penalties for Violating Wildlife Feeding Laws in Oregon

Most Oregon bird feeding penalties don’t come from a bird at all — they come from what a feeder attracts. Under ORS 496.731, if an officer determines that food, garbage, or another attractant is drawing in bear, cougar, coyote, or wolf, you can be issued a written notification requiring you to remove the food, garbage, or other attractant within two days of notification. Ignoring that notice, more than the original feeder, is usually what turns a warning into a citation.

City-level penalties tend to be more immediate and specific. Cannon Beach classifies a wildlife-feeding violation as a misdemeanor with a maximum fine of $500, while Dundee caps its fine at not more than $250.00 but adds a separate remediation requirement — failing to secure or remove attractants after the city issues a written request counts as its own violation. Ashland’s bear-related feeding violations carry a $500 fine on top of whatever penalty applies under state law.

Common Mistake: Assuming a written warning is the end of the matter. In most Oregon cities, ignoring a remediation notice — not the original feeder — is what escalates a case into a fine.

Enforcement almost always follows the same pattern regardless of city: a complaint or officer observation, a warning or written notice, a grace period to fix the problem, and only then a citation for residents who ignore it. Other states show how quickly this can escalate — in Bloomington, Minnesota, feeders are legal at a height of five feet off the ground, but throwing feed onto the ground instead of using a feeder is illegal, and one resident there faced possible jail time over that exact distinction. Oregon’s enforcement is generally civil rather than criminal for ordinary songbird feeding, but the bear-attractant statutes carry real weight, and repeat violations can escalate the same way. For a wider view of how the state handles nuisance wildlife more broadly, see our overview of Oregon’s wildlife-related laws.

The short version: feeding chickadees and finches from a squirrel-proof feeder is legal almost everywhere in Oregon, but ducks, geese, and anything that draws a bear fall under much stricter rules. Check your city’s ordinance, respect bear-season feeder removals between July and November, and confirm your HOA’s covenants before you install anything permanent. Get those details right, and you can keep feeding the birds in your yard without ever hearing from code enforcement or ODFW.