The Dangers Of Bird Feeders

I'm not very well known on this forum (yet!) but anyone that does know me knows i'm a mad keen nature lover and this experience has left me feeling absolutely wretched and i've posted this as a reminder to all of us

Here's an account of what happened this afternoon .....

A young Goldfinch was trapped inside one of my seed feeders and was 'hanging' from it
Luckily i was able to get a neighbour to vandalise the feeder without killing the young one and it flew away, seemingly okay


I'd been looking through the binoculars across at the Rowan and the feeders and thinking that now i really should go and refill them, i'd been lazy last evening and again this morning and the level of food was way below the 'hole'/aperture opening for their beaks to dip into - and at that point they have to stretch down into the main body/barrel/cylinder of the feeder to reach the food - so there i stood watching.
I then saw, between the windblown foliage, that one bird didn't look 'right', it was a young Goldfinch and looking again i could see that its legs/feet were dangling and i knew it was in trouble so i just ran

This little mite had wedged its neck between the barrel and the 'internal' fixture of the perch and not only had it got stuck but in its struggle its little legs and feet had come off its perch and it was just hanging there by the neck
I took down the feeder and as i touched its little body its wings did a very small flutter and i thought/wondered if it had just died, as it was still warm i hoped that if i could get one of the strong male neighbours to rip the feeder apart it might just have a chance of getting free and living ..... and the rest is history

Most certainly a lesson learnt for me and perhaps others out there who are too lazy to refill their feeders in good time


I'm editing to show the feeder in question, it's made by Gardman.

 

Hi Louise. Quite a traumatic experience for everybody.
I'm trying to picture the whole scenario. Can you post a pic of the bird feeder involved so that we all know what to look out for.
I'm glad your little goldfinch got rescued. Well done you.

 

Young birds in particular can be prone to getting stuck in a tight corner....they seem unable to back out.
I lost one youngster that got stuck beak first in the fork of a branch.It seemed ridiculous that it couldn't just back out...but it died...

 

I'd a dangerous Bird Feeder, but the birds in my garden are a Savvy bunch.
They waited until the Cat went in for lunch before attacking the bait.:D

 

This is the type of seed feeder i was talking about, they're 'Gardman' feeders, a nice rigid, sturdy type.

The seed level was below the round opening, halfway between the hole and the base. Between those two holes (internally) is a piece that goes across the centre of the cylinder and the birds neck was trapped between the piece and the cylinders edge.
By removing the base and ripping the rest apart the bird was able to fly out and before we even knew it, it had flown into a nearby tree and then away to proper safety

 

We are very similar then, Armandii
I have 25 feeders in my front and back gardens, and use 25kilos of sunflower hearts in 6 weeks !
I do not feed peanuts at all and don't use any mesh feeders.
I buy the sunflower hearts from a place called Kennedy Wild Bird Foods.

Those green mesh things that cover fat balls are LETHAL and should be outlawed because those can trap birds feet and legs in a second as they get tangled in them, 2 winters ago i saw a goldfinch whose leg had clearly been trapped - it broke my heart
I saw it around another couple of occasions but never again

I also have feeders with dried mealworms in and some ground feeders too - those contain mealworms, sunflower hearts and Bill Oddies Muesli.
Some might say the birds eat better than me :WINK1:


Any feeder can be a dangerous thing to the young birds that are visiting them for the first times as they are still getting used to them, this was a young goldfinch and very often you see the younger birds still struggling with perfecting the art of landing on the feeders, feeding from these needs a bit of learning.

 

All the birds get sunflower hearts here as they are the preferred choice, i used to offer Niger seeds but they were passed over time and again for the sunflower kernals.


On re-reading my original post it sounds like i'm blaming the feeder and i am SOOOOO not. I am blaming myself.
The feeders are ingenious, it's the 'caretakers' who sometimes lack some grey matter :WINK1:

 

Thank you for posting the pic Louise and for flagging up the problem if the feeders are not kept topped up. The warning will certainly make me be sure the feeders are kept topped up.

 

I tried to rename this thread to 'The Dangers Of Bird Feeders' but it hasn't appeared that way in the listing ..... i vaguely remember one of the Mods saying something about headings .... was it that members can't alter their own thread details, if so why not, seeing as we wrote it ourself

 

The dunnocks and the wood pidgeons mostly, eat the dropped bits, but the finches will go down too.