How to keep bird feeder pole straight

What is usually simple when keeping a pole upright like it should, you may instead need to find a way to keep the metal pole straight while its sunk into your yard.

How to keep bird feeder pole straight is sinking it deeper, as far as you safely can while avoid bringing the hanging bird feeders closer to the ground. You can bury a persistent leaning pole into cement by using a pipe to slot the pole into. Anchor the pole like a camping tent using pegs while avoid saturated grounds.

Its imperative to keep a bird feeder pole straight as it can appear quite unsightly, but there is a more pressing issue to avoid.

You'd need to keep the pole at an 90 degree angle and keep it there, to simply avoid any moving shaking out bird food. What will happen is a mess will become visible under your leaning bird feeder pole due to the pole drastically leaning to one side.

Bird feeder pole could lean gradually until you notice later, or it could just suddenly tilt to one side - due to it being off balanced or if winds picks it up.

Result is bird food making a mess under the bird feeder with the likely chance the bird feeder themselves, gradually slipping off their brackets.

Bury the bird feeder pole up to a foot or a little more to guarantee the pole staying upright, and if that fails you could blame what is saturated ground.

Sink the pole down into the ground as it safely can but do avoid impaling it too far as it will bring the bird feeders close to the ground below it.

Similarly, if you plan to stop squirrels climbing the bird feeder pole then a baffle must be installed a certain way up; thus if the pole is sunken way to far into the ground there will be no space allowed for the squirrel baffle.

In the end you could end up sinking the pole into a concrete foundation. I will advise you not too, or not until you exhaust all other techniques for keeping a bird feeder pole upright with no leaning over possible.

Sink pole deeper into ground

How you put a bird feeder pole into the ground is by sinking it into the ground as far as you possibly can.

Now in the process of burying the pole in the ground you have to remember a bird feeder pole has to be a certain height, in order to sustain the recommended height off the ground of any bird feeders.

How to keep bird feeder pole straight with this basic method of impaling the bird feeder pole - is to sink it in up to a foot deep.

If the pole is seen to want to lean over while not staying straight with the effort you've put in thus far, you can push it into the ground deeper until it feels secure.

When the bird feeder pole is in the ground you'll know when its going to stay straight, as there will be no movement on the pole.

Don't get carried away with yourself when you can push it up to 2 feet down.

I will once again remind you, the bird feeders must be hung 4-5 feet off the ground - to which it would be impossible if you bury the pole too far in.

Bury pole into cement

When impaling the bird feeder pole a little deeper at a time in order to keep the bird feeder pole upright during its use - there must come a time you should give up.

Bird feeder pole can only go into the ground at a certain depth before its rendered useless - as the too far down feeder pole would now push the hanging bird feeders too low to the ground.

What you can do then with a little more time and effort - and expense of course - is to sink the bird feeder pole into a cement foundation.

What I can tell you at this point is rather than burying the pole into the cement which can make it permanent - you can instead push the bird feeder pole into an additional hollow pipe - so the pipe will be stuck in cement rather than your bird feeder pole.

I wouldn't commit to sinking a bird feeder pole - which must be pushed into a pipe - until you know where you place the bird feeder pole in the yard, is seen to attract many birds.

Dig out a hole up to 1 foot across to make a one-square-foot hole that is 2 feet deep.

Pour in your wet cement mix that will come up to half-inch to the lawn surface. Now pop in your up to foot long hollow pipe into the cement with bird feeder pole sunk into it.

Don't waste any time by making sure the bird feeder pole is straight with use of a Spirit level - also known as a carpenter's level. Bird feeder pole can be removed as soon as its safe to, while the hollow pipe will remain in the cement permanently.

How to stabilize the bird feeder pole while the cement is drying, is to hold it by hand for up to an hour, or better still surround the pipe in bricks to keep it at a 90 degree angle.

Later on you can actually dig up the bird feeder concrete foundation and bury it elsewhere if you had to - you just have to dig around it and underneath it to pull up what is an heavy block of cement.

Anchor pole like erecting a tent

Whilst this method can get a little awkward especially when you know you need up to three lengths of tent rope to anchor the bird feeder pole.

Its easy to do once you know how and it can last for a long time providing the pegs don't get lifted out of the ground.

What you do is treat your bird feeder pole as if you are erecting a tent, where you'll keep it standing upright by placing lengths of rope that are fanned out in all directions.

I will suggest only three lengths of rope are needed which will be stretched out tight in a triangle like pattern.

Rope must be taut to keep the bird feeder pole centered in the middle, with no direction it could possibly lean.

How anchoring a bird feeder pole like a tent will help you is the bird feeder pole is unable to lean or drop to one side - as the length of rope anchored opposite will keep the bird feeder pole upright.

You will need a length of rope and of course camping tent pegs to push deep into the ground.

Allow someone to hold the bird feeder pole upright in the process of you setting up the three - or four anchor points if you like - as it will be difficult to do without assistance.

While the anchor pegs are buried into the ground you can tie each end of the rope onto on the same point around the bird feeder pole - or why not tie the rope ends around the bird feeder brackets - which will come readily available to you.

Avoid saturated grounds

I can tell you one thing you certainly won't be able to keep the bird feeder pole straight on saturated ground.

Saturated grounds within a backyard is due to long spells of rainfall, which can result in your lawn becoming wet deep down, which can lead to soft ground.

And you'll know what saturated grounds are in your yard because if you walk over it, the heel of your shoe will feel is if its sinking down.

When you impale anything into the ground of a saturated lawn then this bird feeder pole especially cannot find solid turf where it can be kept straight in.

Saturated ground is a common cause of leaning bird feeder poles, as a minimum foot of depth is needed to safely secure a pole - while forcing you to bury the pole deeper will render the bird feeder pole useless.

I can only advise you to avoid saturated ground within your yard at this time even if you must postpone sinking in your bird feeder pole.

To put it bluntly there is simply nothing you can do at this point other than wait until the rain as stopped - with enough time for the ground to dry up in a week.

If you cannot wait I can suggest you dig a deep hole in the location where you plan to sink in the bird feeder pole; replace wet turf with compact gravel to impale the pole into - then cover the gravel back up with the lifted up layer of lawn slotted back in place.

Summarize

How to keep a bird feeder pole straight in the ground is to simply sink the tip of the pole deeper into your lawn.

While burying the pole up to a foot deep into the ground can be enough, its worth remembering the deeper it is the less likely the pole will be seen to tilt.

With that in mind the further you sink a bird feeder pole into the ground the closer the hanging bird feeders come to the ground. Bird feeders must always be kept 4-5 off the ground, thus its imperative you don't jeopardize this safe distance.

Bury the bird feeder pole as far as you safely can while remember the bird feeders can come dangerously close to the lawn.

At some point how far you bury the bird feeder pole will be ineffective. With that you can then think about sinking the bird feeder pole into a concrete foundation.

Don't go straight in and bury the pole into wet cement because this will be permanent.

What I ask you to do instead is sink a hollow pipe in to the cement with the resulting bird feeder pole slotting perfectly into it without movement.

Keep the bird feeder pole straight with up to three or four anchoring points using lengths of rope while keeping it taut where it will be secured to the ground with camping pegs.

Why your bird feeder pole may not stay straight is probably because the pole isn't sunken into the ground far enough. And if it is perhaps you can blame the ground being too saturated due to heavy rainfall over the last week or so.

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