Catching Birds!

[britlover]

Beautiful Girls! And very athletic looking - no wonder they were catching birds!

[Puddin Man]

I would have thought that, at that height, your finches would be relatively safe given ordinary finchy precautions. There is an awful lot of space between your dogs nose and the finch in the pic. This would suggest Barb's natural solution.

Beautiful gold finch! I can see why you're so concerned.

P

[Brendainnj]

Here's an idea that's typically suggested when trying to lure birds to your backyard...could you plant some shrubbery under the feeder? Just to keep the dogs away from the base of it a bit? It would offer the birds shelter as well. Maybe a thorny kind might discourage them as well. If it were me (I really love my backyard birds!) I'd probably try to put a small fence around the pole & hopefully train them away from it. Thankfully, my pup only like to "scare" the birds on the ground...at this point anyway.

[Cindy]

The fence is an interesting idea although it would be a pain to mow around and this summer (with all the rain we've had) mowing is still happening about every 5 days. We can't really plant shrubs because that gives the other critters (squirrels, coons, etc.) a leg up as far being able to reach the feeder more easily. It's one of the reasons that the feeder sits on a tall pole out in the middle of our yard. More and more I'm having to rethink this situation and try to convince myself about "things being tough in the wild." Or, maybe I should just let the dogs get fat and lazy!!!

[Puddin Man]

What do the finches eat from the feeder? sunflower seeds?

Any chance you could just fling a couple suet-cakes on your roof, inaccessable to the dogs?

P

[Cindy]

Yes, all we feed are sunflower seeds during the warmer months. The problem with putting anything on our roof might be the other animals (our cat, racoons, etc.) that can get to it. It's a single story home and the cat climbs the tree, leaps onto the roof, andn lounges on the chimney!!