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Simple Feeders

Most of us enjoy having blue jays at our feeders. They are certainly colorful, active, and aggressive birds. Sometimes, however, they dominate the backyard and keep smaller birds away. When jays can reach the main supply of seed, they become greedy and attempt to take away all the food we supply.

Watch the blue jay sometime -- it will pick up a sunflower seed and gulp it. The seed goes down a little way into the throat, where it is stored. The bird collects a lot of seeds this way, until its throat bulges. Then it flies away to dump the seeds in the hollow of a tree or in an opening in snow at the base of a bush. It then returns immediately for another raid, and soon all the seeds in the feeder have been removed. The jay takes away more than its share of seeds, and probably most are never retrieved and eaten.

I prefer that birds stay at my feeders to eat so that I can watch them. I therefore fix some of my feeders so that the jays cannot get at the seed.

Because it is larger than many other birds found at backyard feeders, the blue jay can be excluded from a feeder. If the feeder has a roof, holes can be bored into the edge of the roof and edge of the floor. Stiff wires can then be put through to make vertical bars. If these bars are 1-1/4 inches apart, the blue jay will be unable to get between them. But all smaller birds, including evening grosbeaks, cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, and all members of the sparrow and finch family, will be able to get into the feeder. The jay can still reach through to pick up stray seeds, so that it will get all it really needs without being able to reach the main supply.

There are also feeders for small birds that utilize a different principle. These have an overhang above a perch. This overhang is close enough to the perch that a large bird bumps its head before it can get its feet on the perch. Bird stores and mail order companies carry several models of such feeders. Generally these commercial models are made of two clear plastic bowls, with the larger of the two hanging upside down as a roof over the smaller. The gap between the two bowls is not very large, and only a small bird can fly to the lower bowl to get food.

You can also make a feeder of this type yourself, using two wooden salad bowls of different sizes mounted close together. The bowls can be joined with a short piece of wood or dowel. Some people have even joined three or more bowls, one hanging above the other. In any of these arrangements the upper bowl should be larger so that it acts as a roof, protecting the seed from rain. And when the lower bowl has a smaller diameter and is positioned close to the upper bowl, a large bird, such as a blue jay, will bump its head before it can reach the rim of the lower bowl. To alight, a bird must be able to fly under the overhang. The distance between the bowls should be about two inches if you wish to limit use to smaller birds. With a separation of three inches, most birds can use the feeder.

You can also make this feeder out of materials other than wood. One person even made such a feeder from two automobile hubcaps attached in about the same manner as described above. There are also plastic dishes and bowls that can be used. If you can find some that are transparent, birds may be less timid about using the feeder the first time they notice it.

A reader of my newspaper column in The Herald American (Syracuse, New York), A. Efraimson, came up with another rather neat homemade feeder using the same principle. He used a three-pound coffee can, removing the lid and the bottom of the can. This left an open metal cylinder, which was cut as shown in the accompanying sketch. The plastic lid that comes with the can was cut into two halves, and these were taped onto opposite ends over the bottom half of the can's openings. This formed a container to hold the seed. The top edges of the lid halves were covered with a one-quarter-inch dowel as a sort of landing spot and perch at each end of the feeder.

Small birds can fly in under the overhang to get at the seeds in the can. Nuthatches, chickadees, and cardinals have used this feeder. But blue jays can't get in because they are unable to fly under the overhang and get their feet on the landing perch at the same time.