Keep the birds safe

Darwin in action. Remember that on average 90% of little birds have to die beore breeding to keep the population stable

I have a tray made from a 1 foot square vinyl floor tile suspended underneath the feeder. Each edge warmed with hot air gun half-inch in , bend to 90 degrees , corners part cut ,bent and stapled together to make a rim. Another such tile curved over the top ofthe feeder as a roof against rain. It really needs to be 4 such tiles for a 2 foot x 2 foot tray, as sparrows seem to spit out stuff they don't like.

Clearly, you need to cut down the bush, then scatter caltrops round the lawn.

Ta! I haven't attempted to work out how far out I need to go to catch the majority of the ejected food. Half a foot out is easily do-able.

nib

Try a couple of plastic cats in strategic places, e.g. in front of where the cat lurks in the bush. Move them around a bit as the birds will build their presence into their mental mapping and might ignore them.

Cover the area under the bird table with wire netting about 6-9 inches above the ground?

Then the seed will fall through, little birds can get through, but cats won't be able to pounce.

Possibly easier to do that constructing an inverted umbrella.

Cheers

Dave R

Give the feeders away preferably to a neighbour with a dog where you can view them over the fence. It isn’t fair to attract birds in with food and where they can become pray for cats. That’s what we did when we a cat decided to move in.

GH

AIUI if there is a resident cat it will keep others out.

Also some cats are "mousers" and some are "birders".

The answer therefore is to change the cat, and repeat until you get a "mouser". There will be mice after the spilt food.

I suspect there might be some domestic objections!

Andy

Are you sure it's a problem? There's plenty of evidence left behind when a cat does catch a bird, even when it escapes. My daughter has two cats and very extensive bird feeders, and doesn't have any trouble. Cats have to be remarkably fit and fast to catch any adult bird, and all the media fuss about bird numbers being reduced by domestic cats seems to me to be much exaggerated.

There are, to my certain knowledge, vastly more squirrels around than there were fifty years ago, and they're much more likely to be able to reach nests than cats. There are also more small birds of prey such as kestrels, and the corvids will certainly eat eggs and young birds. Urban foxes were almost unknown when I was young, but I see at least one in my garden most years.

Well our bugger goes for both.

Or Rats, I regularly shoot one on the neighbours lawn below their feeder . They are tidy people but with cultivated fields backing onto the gardens you always get some ,at least they haven’t been paddling around in sewer s*it like town rats.

GH

I don't know for sure. Our 17-year old is probably safe by now but the

It's also the time of year when young and inexperienced birds might be appearing.

I've stopped feeding for a while.

nib

Moving in a different direction - and this depends on the size and layout of your garden.

We have two ground feeder trays on the 'lawn' onto which we put various types of feed. As they are in the middle of the lawn, cats can't sneak up on them. There still remains the occasional sparrowhawk which treats the place as a fast food outlet - but there isn't much we can do about that, and even a sparrowhawk has got to eat.

p.s. We make sure we don't leave any food down overnight.

Mouse. My cats went after weasels, voles, ferrets and polecats, rabbits, hares, birds - Small Birds are not good food though. They are more for practice. Oh, and just because your cat comes home with a dead bird in its mouth, don't assume it killed it. Fledglings die in enormous quantities.

As in fact do adult birds. I've had a pigeon fall out of the sky at my feet and die. Famous case of a woman in a park struck by a falling duck.