Home : Do It Yourself : Building Baffles : Bird Watcher's Digest: How To: Pole-mounted Feeder Baffle

Pole-mounted feeder baffle #1

Illustration by Sally Onopa

We constructed, from unused materials, a baffle that will adapt to any platform-type feeder. We started with an 18-inch piece of 11/2-inch galvanized pipe, and flattened one end to make a point that we drove into the ground for a mounting ferrule. Into this pipe we installed a 51/2-foot section of 1-inch (diameter) galvanized pipe for the mounting pole. Next, we cut a 11/2-inch hole into the center of a garbage can lid, and mounted a 11/4-inch galvanized pipe floor flange on the cover with 43/16-inch by 1/2-inch stove bolts. Into the threaded end we screwed a short, 2-inch galvanized nipple, which we drilled and tapped for a 1/4-inch by 20-inch stove bolt with a 1/4-inch wing nut jammed against the bolt head. This allows the cover shield to be raised or lowered as needed. Next we fastened a 3/4-inch galvanized pipe floor flange to the bottom of the feeder and screwed a 6-inch-long piece of pipe into it.

Now we could set the assembly into the top of the post. We drilled a 3/16-inch hole through both the post and the pipe and screwed a large sheet metal screw into the hole to keep the feeder from turning.