I'd love nothing more than to have a huge DIY feeder in our back garden. It'd be like double prizes really. The satisfaction of making the feeder in the first place, and then watching all the birds congregate to feed on the magnificent structure that I'd painstakingly manufactured.
The problem around our area though is that it would, almost certainly, attract a few birds, at first, and then the local grey squirrels would get in on the act, scaring the birds away, and attracting local cats at the same time.
It'd be a pointless exercise for me....unless I got one of those gun things that you have to ward off unwanted interest!
Oh, great...so this is how you mark your triumphant return from self-imposed exile? Driving the Waaaaambulance right into my thread?
Esox, Esox, Esox...you have no idea what you are missing by not feeding birds. You would get a few at first...and as time passed you would get more and more...and the mix of species would continually improve. You could even enjoy those disgusting aerial rats...i.e. House Sparrows and European Starlings...entirely guilt-free, since they are native to your balmy shores.
Squirrels can be a pest...but we are
men, and our brains alone weigh more than an entire squirrel and most of his family. They are not onmipotent; a little ingenuity and perseverance and they are easily thwarted. People who wail about being completely flummoxed by a large rat with a furry tail, and who cannot figure out a solution to the horror...well, it takes all kinds, I suppose...
Simple squirrel-guards are easy to make and install; you can also get much more imaginative and create dastardly devices like some that I have cobbled together in the past, when living...or at least, existing...in urban areas. The Squirrel-o-pult, which worked so well that my father forebade its use after the neighbours began to complain about furry missiles being hurled into their swimming pools and onto their roofs...the Squirrelizer, which lovingly administered an electrical jolt to any arboreal rodent foolhardy enough to touch it (if you got the voltage
just right, this also sent them flying pretty high; too much power and they would simply drop and begin smoking...)...and the much more pedestrian Wheel of Misfortune, which simply surrounded the feeder with a wire cage whose openings were too small for large mischief-makers like Squirrels or Crows to actually reach the feeder itself.
You can, of course, just
buy a squirrel-proof feeder...but where's the fun in that?
Cats? I thought you liked those things? If not...I have simple plans for the construction of a vulture feeder....or you could perhaps contact a local reptile fancier who keeps pythons...
