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

magichalo.org

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

#21

Post by DonaldFisk »

maxbaines wrote: post #15

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...

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

#22

Post by fwarnock »

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

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

#23

Post by NohatCoder »

soneca wrote: post #19
NohatCoder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 da…

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.

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

#24

Post by soneca »

NohatCoder wrote: post #23
soneca wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#25

Post by Sjeiti »

peanut_worm wrote: post #5
bananapear wrote: post #3

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

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

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

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

#26

Post by gaoshan »

skrap wrote: post #18

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 num…

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

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

#28

Post by gkop »

vemv wrote: post #27
gkop wrote: post #2

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..

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

#29

Post by peanut_worm »

otter-rock wrote: post #10
was_a_dev wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#30

Post by mikestew »

anonu wrote: post #11
peanut_worm wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.
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