Posted on 06/12/2012 6:19:07 PM PDT by VA Voter
I need some help giving pest Grackles a hot foot. My wife hates the Grackles so much she wants me to take down the bird feeders altogether but I like all the other birds, so I designed an electrical hot foot for the bottom of the metal feeder that by all I know about electricity should work, but it doesn’t.
The concept is simple: two parallel 16 gage non-insulated copper wires ½" apart, 1/4” above the bottom of the feeder, and attached via wire nuts to the two wires of a modified extension cord. When plugged in, the Grackles are supposed to step on both wires at the same time and, wa’la, the hot foot and they then they aren’t supposed to come back.
It’s a little more complicated with insulation, stability and placement but not much. Definitely low tech. I have tested the wires with a light bulb that lights up when touched to the wires. I do know enough not to test it with my finger.
The Grackles have taken over the feeder for most of the day and bully all the other birds away so I only plug it in at my end when they are on the feeder.
The problem is that the Grackles walk all over both hot wires without so much as a tingle. The design inspiration is from a very similar concept from Bird-B-Gone.
This exhausts my very long ago HS electrical expertise and likewise that of the associate at Home Depot, who got a huge kick out helping with the parts: alligator clips, plastic hose for insulation, electrical tape, portable GFCI switch, wire nuts, etc.
What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance for any help and for all the wise cracks this is sure to attract.
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.
“Is there a SAFE, lo-tech way to test which wire is hot and which is neutral?”
Easy. Find someone with an “owebama-biteme” sticker on their car. Invite them over to talk about what a great pResident we have. When they are overcome with rapture ask them “Hey, hold this wire for me, OK?”
That being said, remember what my Grandpa told me: there is no problem in life that cannot be overcome through the judicious application of high explosives.
“Cattle hide is high resistance...”
That’s for sure. I had a cattle rancher friend in SE Idaho who I asked for advice on setting up an electric horse fence. He told me about his horse fence setup but advised that it didn’t work for cows. His cows would get under the wire and scratch their heads on it until their hair was smoking.
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?
High voltage and low low amperage is the way to go. High amperage even at 120v will be ineffective and possibly very dangerous. When I was a growing up a neighbor went to jail when his “electric fence” which was hooked up to line current killed a kid.
The thread reminds me of locker room talk... I hope that VA Voter doesn't follow any of the dangerous advice. It doesn't make any sense to use something dangerous when a safe and effective option is available for relatively low cast.
There is your answer. I used a bug zapper, tied a wire onto each grate and waited for the grackles. Once or twice is all they need. Also works on squirrels.
PS, the rest of the setup should work, as long as the wires are far enough apart to avoid arching.
Sounds like you need higher voltage/lower amperage.
It sounds like a fun project, but I’d just go out and buy the Bird-B-Gon if I were you. You’re not an electrician, and if you are successful in building something that is nasty enough to hurt the birds, it could be nasty enough to kill you by accident while you are rigging it up. Not worth the risk to save a few bucks, if you ask me.
“One can run 120v (DO NOT DO THIS) between thumb and finger ONLY if both are very dry, and all you will feel is a slight tickle.”
I can confirm that. As a kid, I lived in an old Victorian house where we had a light switch missing the front panel, and old exposed, cloth-insulated wires. One of the wire was completely bare, and my sis and I discovered by accident that if you touched it, you’d get “buzzed”. Nothing really painful, unless you tried to keep touching it in spite of your natural reflex to yank your arm back.
The white wire is the neutral.
The black wire is the hot
On the receptacle (outlet) blade, the small one is the hot and large one is the neutral.
You really need to find someone with a volt meter
“A GFCI only trips when the current flowing in the hot leg doesn’t equal the current flowing the opposite direction in the neutral leg”
Isn’t that what happens during a short? The whole point of a GCFI is to break the circuit when the toaster falls into the bathtub.
Not necessarily. If the short is from hot to neutral, the GFCI will not trip. The GFCI is looking for current to ground, where it is not supposed to be. Water would provide that path.
“DC has much higher potential per volt.”
“potential per volt”
That’s funny.
Supposed to be. I'd still check it with a meter.
Give up on the electricity and try what we have used for years.
Get a pellet gun and study the gaggle of the damn birds (hate em). Look for the dominate male, usually larger and can be spotted by his attitude. Employ pellet gun and the gaggle wil leave and won’t come back. The next year some more will show up but just stay current on target practice.
LMAO.
BOOKbump
I did that once...hubby mentioned his machine was acting odd and seemed to be making zappy noises. It either shut off, or he did a panic shutdown, and I was trying to see what the machine was actually doing...I got lit up the second I hit the power button.
Somehow, the machine itself was completely undamaged from that. Mobo and all, still perfect several years later.
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