If you’re hungry, and want food desperately, getting hosed once or twice is still worth it. It’s eating… it’s survival.
Can’t have a feeder only for “certain birds” any more than you can have a restaurant with a “whites only” or “no Irish” sign in the window. That’s just mean. And I got big angry starlings who stand on the bread I toss out for the normal birds, just to keep them away. So I wait for them to engorge themselves, then put out bread for the normal birds.
I put out the leftover catfood that my cats don’t finish (topping off with some crunchies if not enough), and let whoever wants it eat it. Mostly it’s New Cat, sometimes Fuzzy Cat, but t’other day were 2 big fat chittering raccoons(!) who were bitch-slapping each other for access to the bowl.
I had pigeons here for ages. There’d be a gray churning blanket of feathers that you couldn’t see the ground at all when they were all at the trough. Feathered locusts is what I called ’em. Sprinkle birdfeed for the normal birds, they’d land, and 5min later there’d be nothing put pigeoncrap left behind.
There’s a house whose yard abuts mine, with a ceramic owl on the roof to chase away pigeons. Ha! Not quite effective, ’cause I got a pic of that owl with a big fat pigeon sitting on the owl’s head.
After not feeding anyone for quite a while, they went elsewhere. Normal birds stayed around, eating seeds, bugs, whatever wild birds eat. Once the pigeons went away, fed the normal birds in slowly increasing quantities. Might get a stray pigeon who comes around, but that’s it.
Finally got the Bird Water-Park in operation. Hardest part is finding a “tub” suitable for birds. Look at a crappy plastic bowl to go under a flowerpot or something… 10bux. Call it a “replacement birdbath bowl” and… 67bux.
Took the somewhat cracked (where it snaps into place) lid from an unused spiderwebby storage bin from under the patio, and flipped it upside-down. Olympic-sized bird-pool!
I got a scrap of rubber roofing and stuck it in my old leaky concrete B-bath then weighed it down with some river stones. I’ve also used the planter bases but they fail eventually…