mine was a plastic tube feeder with plastic perches about 1 1/2 inches long and almost any of the birds were perching on it. I took a hack saw and cut the perches off so they were just over 1/2 inch long. it stopped all the birds except the siskins and finches from perching. Last fall a hungry bear tore the feeder down and broke it, I'll have to buy another next spring. and hang it higher.

This is a REALLY helpful post dzyg. I thank you for posting it and hope that many people view it. This is a perplexing ID issue which many of us have endured. I just did some research on this very issue, and I came across a cool webpage which helped me a lot with this. It mentions the brown cheek patch of the male House Finch as an ID clue. This was helpful to me. http://www.birdzilla.com/bird-identification/id-skill-development/id-challenges/red-finches.html

This news about House Finches is incredible. I thought I knew a lot about my feeder birds but I truly forgot that HFs are so menacing. Sure is good to go through these older posts to learn new things. I had so many HFs this summer and it never occured to me they were the reason I had not much else. Thank you so much, hokle and other commenter above.

I have had one to my feeders once in my life. It does throw you a bit when you first see it. Cool! :o)