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Comment by aurizon | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it is possible to set up some sort of supplementary feeding stations. Suet or vegetable oil minced with crickets(or other mass raisable insect grubs??). They would have to be on poles to stop predators and would have to suit the birds habits, with the ability to feed hovering birds as well as perchers. It will take some research, but lines of these just off roads would provide a number of lines of feeders that could be maintained via the road, with a liftable hopper top I think many birds would adapt to this lifeline during their migration. It would involve many tons of food for the migratory season and to be established in advance.

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I wish that were easier. I've found that the cleaning involved is burdensome. It's recommended that you take the feeder down and scrub it with bleach every few weeks to prevent the spread of parasites between the closely packed feeding birds. Worse for me is that even when I can keep the feeder away from the local rodents (a non-trivial challenge), seeds fall to the ground and it becomes a hot spot for insects and rodents. The rodents here are causing major damage to my house and vehicles. It was just higher maintenance than I expected, so I stopped. But I do like having the birds around. Maybe I can start again after retirement.

What kind of rodents do you have in your part of the world that they damage your _vehicles_??

Not uncommon for rodents to chew on hose or wiring.

Just last week a colleague of mine had car electric problems that turned out to be a rat chewing through cables.

It's weirdly common(ish) problem.

They started using soy-based insulation in automotive wiring a couple decades ago.

Sadly, it turns out that rodents really like to eat that kind of insulation. So if you have a car made after ~2000, you need to keep pests away from wherever you store it.

This is also a problem for e.g. excavation equipment that might sit unused for weeks at a time.

Guessing: martens.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-go-absolutely-insane-and-t...:

“Auto makers are building defenses against stone martens, a type of weasel that invades engines and eats the wiring

[…]

We only have data from those insurers that offer a weasel policy”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_marten#Car_damage:

“Since the mid-1970s, the beech marten has been known to occasionally cause damage to cars. Cars attacked by martens typically have cut tubes and cables. A beech marten can slice through the cables of a starter motor with just one bite. The reason for this is not fully known, as the damaged items are not eaten. There is, however, a seasonal peak in marten attacks on cars in spring, when young martens explore their surroundings more often and have yet to learn which items in their habitat are edible or not.[29] The fishoil often contained in the cables of cars from Japan may contribute to this”

The ones living in my pickup's engine compartment are kangaroo rats. The usual repellents don't seem to make much of an impression on them.

Hirundo, I see. So perhaps a non germinating mixture would be good. I agree with the parasite problem. Perhaps 4-6 dunk tanks, so the new full top can be attached and the empty one immersed to soak in the detergent tank(no insecticide) and when you raise the next one, the soaking ones are drained and then a few rinse tanks. That way a crew could have them in the back of a pickup and do the swaps and dunk/rinse changes as they go from feeder tp feeder. This will have to be a short term production line in motion for the 4-6 weeks of the migration. Foods can change as the migratory species change over the various species migration patterns. This needs to be a major continuing state/national effort in many global areas to sustain the birds as the warming and concimmitant changes occur - or we witness the end of many species of birds.

A coworker has an extensive setup for feeding birds, squirrels, and raccoons. He deals with rats and mice with a high powered air gun with a well calibrated scope and sufficient skill that he's able to kill them quickly with one shot. He's killed something like a hundred over the last couple of years.

If you are willing to kill the rats and mice instead of just drive them away somehow, then taking up shooting as an additional hobby might be worth considering.

I've ruled it out because I don't really want to kill them, and also in my feeding area there is no good spot to take a shot from where a miss would not potentially go somewhere I really do not want it to go.

There's a natural alternative, with lower maintenance requirements:

http://www.audubon.org/native-plants

A valid suggestion, but the growing dust bowl might mean that general plant growth is down, less seed and insects = starvation mode. For decades the South west has been depleting all of it's aquifers, so wells are getting deeper and with more salt and other mineral intrusions. This is all tied to the global warming. The great lakes are getting wetter, so major canal works to direct some of the great lakes excess to the southern and western water table is the solution. Now the excess water drains unused into the Atlantic ocean - flooding many US/Canada riverine communities.

What a great oportunity for yet one more economic activity for people. Sad reality is that this economic activity would have no need if not the other econiomic actvities which have caused the problem in the first place.

This starts to look like cutting down the forest and then replantig lesser version of it because it feels not so cozy on plain field...

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Apparently the wild bird feeding industry is worth $2 billion.

Well, we cut down the forests and built farms because we needed food to feed the growing population and economy of the young United States. Now we are seeing over time farms outside of cities being converted to suburbs with little to no habitat for birds. But hopefully over time as the suburbs mature, trees will grow taller and provide more habitat for birds.

Yes, but the ultimate question is how much population is enough and are we capable of self limiting. Oposed to limits imposed from outside. Because with outside limits, it might be to late to keep balance for whole ecosystem, when we hit them (limits)

Are you talking about Human population? Human population is forecasted to peak mid century and begin to decline as more women have access to education and contraception [0]. Many models are predicting this, however personally I'm not 100% sold on the models yet. I think trying to fight the population growth is just as infeasible as trying to move a mountain. I think we have better chances to fight ecological decline by educating the population on effects of overconsumption of goods, pollution, and energy use.

[0] http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-world-populati...

I may have missed a link to a complete list of species tallied in this event, but the photographed birds are mostly Violet-Green Swallows. This species eats flying insects exclusively (source: Birds of the World research database) and would not be able to take advantage of feeders.

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