Why do birds hate Mercedes-Benz hubcaps when they are used as bird feeders?

by James K. Sayre

1 March 2003

My backyard, which is located in the Rockridge district in Oakland, features five different bird feeding stations that hang outside of the sun room. These feeders get regular year-round visits from English Sparrows, House Finches and Chestnut-sided Chickadees. Winter visitors include Mourning Doves, Plain Titmice, Scrub Jays and Brown Towhees. Sometimes during the daytime a bold reddish Fox Squirrel will come to the large flat feeder for some sunflower seeds. At night a local Roof Rat (Rattus rattus) comes for any remaining sunflowers seeds. There used to be at least two Roof Rats that lived in my attic, but I haven't heard any of their late evening antics of staging footraces in the last few months.

Last week, I thought that I would add a sixth feeder made from an old Mercedes-Benz steel hubcap that I had found lying in the street in front of my house. I had seen that hubcap lying in the street - unwanted and unclaimed - for several days. I finally picked it up and hung it on a nail from the top of the front porch roof - sort of a decoration.

Then I had a minor brainstorm - they seem to be milder and spaced further apart as time goes by - and decided that the hubcap could be a sort of catch-basin for one of the cylindrical feeders. Many vertically-shaped bird feeders allow much scattering of the supply of birdseed, because the birds in their haste to eat, scatter much of it onto the ground. Chickadees seem to be especially fussy about which particular sunflower seed they are going to crack open and eat: they often will discard several seeds before finding one that is "just right" for their seemingly Royal Gullets. Sometimes the Towhees and Juncos will find and eat the fallen seed.

It is more efficient to have a large diameter flat feeder sitting directly below a narrow vertical feeder. It can catch most of the accidental spillage of seed. So, inspired, I took the hubcap and rinsed it out in the bathtub. Then I attacked the accumulated car grime on the hubcap with shampoo and a sturdy scrub brush. Finally, it was almost sparkling, at least in the low rounded center portion of the hubcap. Clean enough for the birds to eat off, I thought.

So with some heavy cord I made a three-sided attachment to hang up the hubcap underneath the vertical bird feeder. I even tossed a starter of some mixed birdseed onto the hubcap. Then I waited. And the birds proceeded to wait, too. They had decided to boycott the whole feeder complex. I don't know if they were scared, offended or just not hungry. This standoff went on for several days, then a few birds came to the other feeders, but none visited the Mercedes-Benz steel hubcap "feeder" or the vertical bird feeder that was positioned directly above it.

Finally, I gave up and cut down the hubcap non-bird feeder. Almost immediately a few Sparrows returned to the vertical bird feeder sans its hubcap catch basin.

I don't know what it was about that hubcap "feeder" that offended the local birds, but to a man (or a woman) they avoided it.

The hubcap has been returned to its original decorative function, suspended from the top of the front porch roof by a sturdy rubber band and a cord, rotating ever so slightly in the gentle breezes.

End.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Please feel free to Email the author at sayresayre@yahoo;com. sayresayre@yahoo.com

This web page was recently created by James Sayre.

Contact author James K. Sayre at sayresayre@yahoo.com. Author's Email: sayresayre@yahoo.com

Copyright 2003 by Bottlebrush Press. All Rights Reserved.

Web page last updated on 7 May 2003.

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