Deter House Sparrows from your hanging feeder with a Magic Halo (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Deter House Sparrows from your hanging feeder with a Magic Halo (2017)

magichalo.org

44 pointsCoffeeOnWrite32 comments

Thank you so much for the interest everyone. I stopped production of the Halo device just for the Summer as we recollect parts and build inventory again. We tend to discourage Summer (July & Aug) mix-seed feeding in any case, since juvenile House Sparrows are generally immune to the wires and carry this into adulthood. This is where halo efficacy is somewhat lower in the Summer as seen in the U of Neb paper. Everything about this device is contained in my blog. Start home and scroll down, or at least check out these two:

https://www.magichalo.org/2022/01/magic-halo-3-years-in-revi... https://www.magichalo.org/2022/01/as-we-enter-our-4th-year.h...

We find that, overall, the Halo is about 85% effective according to those surveyed. Cheers, -Francis

I made one of these halos 2 years ago, and my anecdotal experience is that the older (fully grown) sparrows can't figure it out, but the smaller, younger ones get through. Then, weeks later, I see fully grown sparrows at the feeder, ignoring the halo. Did the little ones "fit" and then grew too used to it to be spooked? Did the big ones learn from the little ones? I don't know.

Another observation: Because of the number of sparrows, I did pull the whole feeder down and kept it down for months. Then, when winter approached, I put the feeder and the halo back up, and no house sparrows made it through again. Did the adults who were defeating it before forget? Move on? Die? Who knows!

Check out fwarnock's reply. They explain exactly this behavior.

I thought it was interesting that it’s apparently a mystery why hanging lines deters sparrows (see the papers linked at the end of the first paragraph).

What would be a tldr for the paper (other than "it's a mystery":) )?

In candor, I only skimmed them, and all I saw was "the reasons lines repel certain birds is not fully understood". When I submitted the article here, part of me was hoping someone would know or speculate why and share with us..

Why would you want to deter them? What’s the problem with them vs other small birds?

In the product description:

- Resist feeding non-native invasive HOSP to encourage native species

House Sparrows are invasive in the United States and they are very aggressive. They destroy the nests of native birds to eliminate competition.

Thanks for the context - with House Sparrows being resident in Eurasia, I didn't understand the motivation for this either

Many birds commonly seen in the US are non-native, and reduce native bird populations significantly.

https://abcbirds.org/blog20/invasive-birds/

Odd that this list considers Cattle Egrets as invasive, I have never heard that before. They came here naturally just fairly recently. Their range expanded due to human activity but, rather interestingly, it was because they had more available food sources rather than physically being moved by people. They eat parasites off cattle so as cattle farming expanded so did their range.

Herons are already capable of traversing entire continents, as can be seen with Night Herons. Cattle Egrets just didn’t really have a reason to expand until recently.

We have bluebird houses and can confirm. One box full of pecked-to-death bluebirds with house sparrow eggs on top of them is quite enough. I call the males "bearded bastards."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Schieffelin

Reminds me of this guy, who thought it would be a good idea to introduce the birds in Shakespeare's plays to the US.

That’s because it’s the same guy who earlier sponsored the introduction of the house sparrow to the U. S.

That is peculiar. Because in the Netherlands the native house sparrow population has declined significantly since the '90s.

Same is happening with Starlings. They are in decline in Europe but they thrive the North America

Honestly, they are cute, I like having them around, but we've got some feeders, and if there are house sparrows, there are no other birds. We've been tweaking the feed we use and the form factor of the feeders to keep them away. Since we switched to nyjer, they've generally left the feeder alone, and we get finches instead.

you're right but then some people also say burmese python are cute.

I wonder if avoiding the wires has anything to do with magnetic field lines? I know some birds can see the earth's magnetic field, maybe the wires appear larger to their magnetic senses compared to other bird species?

This surprised me, House Sparrows here in the UK seem to get along with other small birds just fine, I never see any aggression at feeders or in the hedgerows.

Other thing is that in England, notably London, as well as in some continental European cities, house sparrows are now scarce where they used to be abundant, so if you live there you shouldn't be deterring them.

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/b...

https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/conservation/projects/cause...

https://www.ua-magazine.com/2019/09/25/an-unsolved-mystery-t...

Might have something to do with house sparrows evolving there and it being their native range, so other animals have had time to learn how to deal with them.

As far as this actually does anything, the birds will surely learn to ignore it / navigate around it. That is why house sparrows are so widespread in the first place, they have adapted to all the stupid things we humans do.

> ”the birds will surely learn to ignore it”

Why so sure? Did you read the papers and have any reasoning to why they will adapt?

Because of learning and/or evolution. The paper doesn't offer any reason why they shouldn't adapt, as adaptation goes this one should be pretty easy as it is basically just a mindset, probably perfectly doable within the boundaries of learning. So if they become widespread, they will stop being effective, most likely within a few years. Just like the cartoon scarecrow with a bunch of crows resting on it, it wasn't dangerous, so the crows stopped caring.

So, considering adaptation would take years and depending on widespread adoption, this seems a very useful tool to employ for some time. Very far from “stupid things humans do”.

Arbitrarily prefer on bird over another, and believe that you can do something about it with passive-aggressive architecture. That is neither dog stupidity, zebra stupidity nor jellyfish stupidity. That is human stupidity in action.

Well, you can do something.

It isn't arbitrary - it is preferring native species to invasive species. Whether you agree with the logic or not - it isn't arbitrary.

The behavior of most small animals is a good deal more stereotyped than it seems, and the experimental evidence shows they do have an inherent disposition to avoid this setup. Unless these devices become commonplace, there may be little pressure for them to adapt (this would not mean these devices would be pointless, as the main goal is to feed other species rather than cut off food from the sparrows.)

Even if the name sounds like an infomercial product, the science seems to be legit.

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