Porch Feeder for the Unsuccessful Cricket Flipper

[xprtbrdr]

After standing in the snow and cold here in Northeast Wisconsin trying unsuccessfully to feed our starving Purple Martins by flipping cricket's I came up with a technique that works. The houses we have are wood and all have porches attached.
I removed the saw blade from a pruning pole. Then attached an 8" piece of 1" aluminum angle iron to the pruning knife. (1"X8" aluminum angle iron can be substituted by using wood or plastic, see photo below.) To that attach a 2 1/2" piece of 1 1/4" PVC pipe with a cap on one end.
A trip to the local Hardware Store for 7' of 1 1/4" inside diameter thin wall conduit (or whatever size fits over your pruning pole), 14' of clothesline rope, and (3) 1/4"X3" eye bolts.
Attach the 7' conduit to the pruning pole by sliding it over the bottom of the pole about 1'. Drill (3) 1/4" holes at 3',7' & 11' from the bottom of the pole, be sure the 7' hole goes through the pruning pole and the 1 1/4" conduit. Insert the (3) 1/4"X3" eye bolts.
Replace the shearing rope (rope that comes with your existing pruner) with the 14' clothesline rope.
Load mealworms, crickets, scrambled eggs, etc. into PVC pipe, (My honey's job). I raise the pole to above the porch, pull the rope which dumps the PVC payload right onto the porches. Dinner is served, some Martins will stay in the compartments and poke their heads out to dine.

[Jones4381]

Genius! Marvelous photo

[C.C.Martins]

second the opinion -genius! Love that picture too!!

[MKaye]

That is definitely genius!
Last year was my first year to supplement feed my Martin’s. Oklahoma had five days of rain in May and we lost many birds. I rigged up an extension light bulb changer pole we had purchased at Lowe’s for changing our lightbulbs. I then taped a mini solo cup to the end, and filled it with mealy worms and crickets and put them on the porches. My picture looks a lot like yours with rain instead of snow. I did not have a feeder tray and it was too windy, and rainy to try flipping crickets for the first time. I watched as the birds would peak out and take the crickets and mealy worms from the porch. I was so happy to see them eating and taking them to their new hatchlings. I spend a fortune at our local bait shop last year. This year I have ordered crickets from Fluker Farms. A big thanks to who ever recommended them on the forum. They are 10 times cheaper than the bait shop. If you have a porch and the birds are hungry they definitely will take the food. I would post a picture but have not figured that out yet.

[Martintown33]

Ditto! Absolute genius… great idea and design!
Rob