Still waiting for new feeders to arrive, but have mended the current ones for the time being.
In the mean time, I have made what I have will be a couple of improvements.
First job was to fix the broken clamp. I took the clamps of each end of the broken articulated arm and ordered some stainless steel 3/8" threaded rod and nuts from ebay.
View attachment 284799
Cutting the rod to length and using two nuts on each side to form a locking nut allows me to adjust the angle between the two clamps so now I can set my perches at something other than perfectly horizontal. I could do this with the same clamps before the arm broke, but this arrangement should be simpler and more robust and wont be destroyed by being left out int he elements.
View attachment 284800
And here it is in use.
View attachment 284801
Next up was to come up with a better support for my camera. I was using my tripod with a small ball head, but there were two niggling issues with this. The tripod was too big with the legs splayed out to properly fit on the bench so was always a little precarious. And the ball head meant I had to keep a constant hold of the camera so it didn't drop, or keep using the lock function every time i thought a bird may be coming into shot.
So I have bodged together a new support using an el'cheapo gimbal head, some 4" fence post, a bit of steel plate and some of the left over 3/8" stud.
View attachment 284802View attachment 284803View attachment 284804View attachment 284805View attachment 284806
Seems to do the job fairly well. Would be perfect with a decent gimbal head, but I am not ready to be dropping a couple of £££ on something that will get limited use. The downside of the cheap ones is that there are no bearings in the pivots so the friction in the pivots stops the camera returning to its balance position. But it is an improvement on the ball head I was using before.
Not had a chance to use it in anger yet, the foreground foliage has all gone a bit mental and needs a good prune!