Build a Bye-Bye Blackbird Feeder

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 I love watching birds, so—a few years ago—I set three feeders out in the yard near our house . . . and was soon playing host to a delightful variety of winged visitors. Cardinals, chickadees, and nuthatches flitted about the stations regularly . . . a dozen or more sparrows actually set up residence nearby . . . and, every evening, a redheaded woodpecker would stop in for supper.

All went well for my feathered friends and me, until the grackles came.

At first, only a few of the noisy jay-sized fowl arrived . . . but soon squadrons of the gluttonous raiders—20, 30, and even 40 at a crack—were swooping down on the feeders and helping themselves to enormous quantities of grain. My immediate response was to resent the invasions . . . then (almost as quickly), I felt guilty about my reaction. After all, I had set out the devices to attract "warmblooded vertebrates with feathers and forelimbs modified as wings", and (like it or not) the blackbirds qualified.

However, my guilt was short-lived, and soon gave way to annoyance—and then rage—as the size of the hordes and the frequency of their visits increased. They quickly tripled my weekly feed bills and—worse yet—frightened away virtually all of my other winged visitors. Only the quick, nervy sparrows dared to dart in (on those rare occasions when the grackles were gone) to snitch a few bites from what had become the blackbirds' private hoard.

Enough was enough! In an attempt to solve the problem, I took two of the feeders—a platform type and a trough-style model—down, and shortened the perches on the remaining cylinder feeder so that only the daintier backyard birds could get both feet on it. The ruse worked . . . for about a day and a half. Although the big bandits had to spend some time getting a grip on the problem, they soon learned to grasp the sawed-of perch with one claw and to flap the opposite wing to maintain their balance, while they fed . . . and fed . . . and fed.

By that time, I (who had never owned a firearm) found myself reading shotgun ads and wondering where I could find a recipe for "four and twenty blackbird pie". Reason prevailed, however, in the form of a flash of inspiration: If I couldn't turn their size against them (those 747's of backyard "bird-dom"), maybe I could use their weight to force them of the dole. Hmmmmm. . . .

The unusual-looking feeder shown here is the result of that concept and its evolution over the course of a summer spent conducting experiments with antigrackle gadgetry. The station's counterbalanced perch is connected by levers to a gate that, when the rod is depressed, automatically closes over and blocks the feed opening. If a bird that weighs more than the feeder's 2-1/2-ounce limit lands on the perch . . . click! . . . the door drops down tight!