Goodbye Traditional Bird Feeders — The Home Depot Find That Looks Like A Lighthouse

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Traditional bird feeders can be a bit common and may not add much visual interest to your outdoor space. Sure, attracting a diverse variety of birds to your yard is the main job of any bird feeder — no matter how it looks — but why not try to find one that offers function as well as form. For example, the North States lighthouse bird feeder from The Home Depot, which looks like a mini lighthouse.

Retailing for $18.15, this red and white lighthouse bird feeder has a removable slate roof for filling, and glass windows all around the top, as if it was a real lantern room. On the sides of the lighthouse, there are small circular windows that help you monitor the level of seeds inside the lighthouse. At the bottom, there's a dark gray tray for birds to perch on and eat from, which looks like the ground that the lighthouse is standing on.

This unique bird feeder can hold up the 8 pounds of birdseed, and measures nearly 14.5 inches tall. The tray on the bottom is around 9.5 x 10.25 inches. The lighthouse comes with a squirrel-proof cable that you can use to hang it from a pole or a tree, or you can buy North State's 6-foot aluminum pole set separately to mount it that way instead of hanging it. As of this writing, the North States large red/white lighthouse bird feeder has a rating of 4.9/5 stars.

The manufacturer recommends using black oil sunflower seed mix with this bird feeder. You can try it out with other bird seed mixes if you'd like, but make sure they're all relatively small so that they'll fit inside the bird feeder openings and release onto the perch. Anything smaller than sunflower seeds, like this bag of Kaytee wild birdseed, would work. And if you're worried about squirrels making their way into the mix, look for squirrel-proof seeds that are treated with a spicy coating. Birds can't taste this, but mammals can, which is enough to steer them clear of the feeder. 

Another consideration is just how large the lighthouse is. It has a capacity of 8 pounds, but filling it all the way will make the lighthouse fairly heavy, which could snap the branch that it's attached to. A reviewer from January 2026, who gave the bird feeder five stars, shared, "The bird feeder is so heavy with bird food in it. Had a nice metal rope to hold it up on a branch." Another customer, meanwhile, who gave the product three stars, had a similar observation: "It holds a lot of seed and gets heavy once full, so you will need somewhere strong to hang it."

On a related note, you'll need to check in on the seeds and clean the feeder every few weeks — more often in humid weather. To make this easier, it's better to avoid overfilling and start slow, trying to gauge how many seeds your local birds really need for a one- to two-week period. This will help prevent your bird feeder from getting moldy and gross.