In message
, Farm1
writes
"Martin" wrote in message
On Sat, 4 Nov 2006 17:04:45 -0000, "Gill Matthews"

I have seen metal hanging bird feeders in painted metal and
verdigris
copper, but shiny things tend to scare birds e.g. the rows of cds I
hang up
scare the birds off my Brassicas quite effectively and it seems
that you
might get a similar effect with a stainless steel bird feeder?

The CDs I hung up took the birds all of 5 minutes to learn to
ignore.
Are your CDs Val Doonigan CDs or what?

2 more things you might try and both of which work to keep parrots
from eating the new tips on my roses as they emerge. The first is to
tie plastic shopping bags by the very ends of the handles to the top
of tall stakes so that the bags flap in any breeze. The second is to
tie aluminium pie plates or hotplate spill protectors to a run of
string between stakes. The clanking together and shininess seems to
deter the parrots but not the wrens who come to clean up the aphids.

We used to have one of those squirrel-proof mesh feeders with the shiny
metal tube that slides down over it to keep squirrels out. The big shiny
tube didn't seem to deter anything at all ... but the fox (I assume)
finally figured out how to untwist the bottom, and the lousy varmint
didn't just take the peanuts, he took the whole tube!

--
Klara, Gatwick basin