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I had to rescue a little female finch yesterday. It had gotten trapped by an anti-squirrel feature on my bird feeder. I was sitting in the living room reading, with the sliding doors open and just the screen closed, and I kept hearing this 'whirring' sound like a bird's wings. I glanced out and didn't really see anything but the sound persisted so I got up and went over and realized there was a finch on the lowest port of my feeder who couldn't seem to get away from it! I opened the door and went over to the feeder to see what I could do. The little bird was clearly terrified but it calmed down after a moment or two, I guess it figured if I hadn't eaten it yet I wasn't going to. I could see that one of the 'points' on the cloverleaf-shaped guard that keeps squirrels from reaching into the feeder had gotten stuck in the soft tissue just above the bird's beak. I know that's hard to visualize if you haven't seen this variety of caged-port tube feeder so here's a pic:
(You can see the 'cloverleaf' shape of the inner cage if you look closely.)
I tried a couple of times to get my fingers through or under the cage to ease the bird's beak down off the point but they were too big and I was afraid of crushing it's delicate little bones, so I took the feeder down and laid it on the picnic table so the bird didn't have to support its own weight, and then ran inside and got a crystal nail file I keep in the living room (for those urgent living-room related nail emergencies, doncha know!). It has a blunt tip so I thought it would be safe enough. I managed to slip that through the bars of the outer cage and press down on the bird's beak just enough to free it from the point, and in less than a second the bird was free and had flown away to perch on the fence and yell at me. I think that was a good sign that it was okay, just shaken up.
I didn't realize it was possible for that kind of thing to happen with this feeder, and now I have to think about getting a different kind to prevent this from happening again, even if it does work pretty well at keeping the squirrels off. I don't want to injure any birds.
(You can see the 'cloverleaf' shape of the inner cage if you look closely.)
I tried a couple of times to get my fingers through or under the cage to ease the bird's beak down off the point but they were too big and I was afraid of crushing it's delicate little bones, so I took the feeder down and laid it on the picnic table so the bird didn't have to support its own weight, and then ran inside and got a crystal nail file I keep in the living room (for those urgent living-room related nail emergencies, doncha know!). It has a blunt tip so I thought it would be safe enough. I managed to slip that through the bars of the outer cage and press down on the bird's beak just enough to free it from the point, and in less than a second the bird was free and had flown away to perch on the fence and yell at me. I think that was a good sign that it was okay, just shaken up.
I didn't realize it was possible for that kind of thing to happen with this feeder, and now I have to think about getting a different kind to prevent this from happening again, even if it does work pretty well at keeping the squirrels off. I don't want to injure any birds.
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