How about put the wire further apart and put water at the bottom so the birds stand in an electrified puddle. (Kinda like throwing a hairdryer in the bathtub)
Hang and electrify tinsel.
Use a higher voltage.... get a 12V transformer and wire it backwards... 1200V output. (Don’t do that)
You want high voltage. Try a 25v doorbell transformer wired backwards — that should give you four or five hundred volts. Or borrow an electric fence transformer.
I'll be forwarding your post to the SPCA. Lawyer up, sicko.
;-\
You are using coal fired energy. You will fail. You must use either solar, wind, or algae based power. You do not mention it, but I presume you have gone through the mandatory 3 year EPA approval period and obtained an endangered species waiver from the Fish and Wildlife Administration?
I'll be forwarding your post to the SPCA. Lawyer up, sicko.
;-\
OK here we go....not responsible for you burning your yard down or any other part of your house down....bird may fly off on fire.
Replace board holding your feeder with 1/8” aluminum plate
Lug neutral wire to plate (white wire) to plate.
Weave bare copper wire over aluminum plate lifted above plate space and insulated from aluminum plate. Space weaving 1/2” or so apart. May have to adjust this as needed. IMPORTANT: MUST be insulated from aluminum plate
Attach black wire to bare copper wire and white wire to plug.
Turn on as needed.
Do not connect to GFCI. GFCI will trip and only administer small current shock.
My brother in law and I built a mouse trap like this for our deer camp. Use to sit for hours throwing back cool ones enjoying the light show. Yeah, sick I know....but sometimes the nights and days get long at deer camp.
Enjoy
Then get them wet.
Then give them a stinger with broken off insulator.
Have them switch hands wings, grabbing the uninsulated part of the stinger.
HEY it worked on me.
The problem is that the Grackles feet are essentially non-conducting.
.
First the bird must contact both supply wires or the HOT and Ground- At the same time. Otherwise no current and no shock.
2nd A higher voltage is much more effective in that it will overcome resistance much better- causing a greater current or shock in this case.
As someone here suggested then you best bet is probably an electric fencer unit. It will provide a higher voltage and will also pulse on and off so that if a human comes in contact with it then they will have a chance to let go.
Yeah, those grackles have dry scaly bird feet that don’t conduct very well. The current is so low that they’re barely even getting a tingle. Heck, they might even like it.
They supply high voltage but limit the current to a non-lethal level. Cattle hide is high resistance, like your bird's feet, and high voltage is needed to overcome it. A fence transformer will help keep you from electrocuting yourself if you make a mistake.
Wire the output of the transformer to the wires on the feeder, and plug in an extension cord at the house end to activate it for the nuisance bird, deactivate for desired birds, reactivate for squirrels.
Don’t use house voltage. Very dangerous thing to do and setting yourself up for major legal liability. Go to Tractor Supply or a farm equipment store and get a fence surger. You’ll have 5000 volts that will be far safer. The thing is for any thing to work the intended critter has to be on the hot lead and touch ground. Birds roost on utility high voltage power lines. How? Because they are sitting on one conductor and no ground..
My father liked to feed the song birds at the cottage but the larger birds keep eating all the feed and chasing the smaller birds away......he built a bird feeder with a loud bell under the foot bar...the smaller birds were not heavy enough to trip the the bell (buzzer) but it caused the larger birds to fly away when they tripped the buzzer. Pretty soon the larger birds didn’t even come around anymore. It took a little observation and trial and error to get the balance just right....anything as large as a robin got scared off the feeder..
If the two wires are only 1/2” apart, the birds may be bridging the gap with only one foot, which means the current is going across the tough skin on that foot and not up into the bird’s body for a good jolt - try putting the wires like 1” apart so there’s a chance the bird will get each foot on one wire, which should get his - or her -attention......
Have you tried one of the squirrel-proof feeders, which has a feeding perch that cuts off the seed when a heavy animal tries to get on it?
Works for us.
This reminds me of a story.
Once, my dad did a similar trick when the neighbor’s dog kept eating our cat’s food after chasing her away from her bowl.
Dad got a large piece of sheetmetal, about 3x3 square. In the middle, he glued a piece of foam rubber. On top of that, he glued a disposable aluminum pie pan.
One bare lead of an extension cord got soldered to the sheetmetal. The other threaded through a small hole in the rim of the pie pan and wrapped tight around the rim of it to make good contact.
Then, he put cat food in the bowl and waited inside the glass sliding door, with the end of the extension cord ready to plug in inside. The cat came up and began eating as usual, and soon the neighbors dog came along and chased her off. The dog put his front paws on the sheetmetal and dad plugged the extension cord in.
A beautiful blue spark shot between the dog’s wet nose and the pie plate. The dog ran away, but soon came back. This time, he leaned way out to try to keep from touching the sheetmetal, but he soon lost his balance and stepped on it again. Another beautiful blue spark.
That was the last time. The dog ran about 20 yards away, yipping in pain. He stared in total confusion at the cat, who came back and began eating soon after he ran away, completely unharmed, because my dad had pulled the plug. We never saw that dog go near either the cat or the food again.
Of course, we always had to feed the cat out of the pie pan/sheetmetal contraption from then on.
Boy this reminds me of when I was a boy one summer visiting my Grandpa’s house. He was a transplant from the old world (Czec) and only had a minimum of schooling but had a keen wit with common sense problems. He had a plum tree in his yard and the squirrels would get up the tree and ruin the fruit. Here is what he did. He took two bare copper wires and wrapped them in a double helix (just like a dna molecule) up the trunk of the tree and put an extension cord to the tree. He would wait under his Linden tree and watch for the squirells. When they came close he would plug in the extension cord. I saw a squirrel hop up on the trunk and was immediately pushed off the tree by what I deemed was an invisible hand of god. The squirrel sat on its side and looked dead. Then he came to life and immediately jumped five feet straight up in the air and took off. He never bothered the plum tree again and my Grandpa and I laughed and talked about this for years. I would try wrapping the wires in loose coils like a double helix DNA molecule. Google it and you’ll see what I mean. It worked for squirrels, why not birds?