Good hygiene at your feeding stations is essential. I wipe down my feeder ports and surfaces on a regular basis and the vast majority of my feeders come apart for easy cleaning. This is a big factor to consider, for me,  when choosing a feeder. With many birds feeding from a communal space, diseases such as Trichomonosis’, a parasitic disease, can spread quickly, as it is passed from bird to bird as they feed. The parasite causes the birds throat to swell, they cannot swallow. As they try to feed, they deposit infected saliva into the feeder and the next bird to feed is infected. There is no cure or treatment, the birds die of starvation in just a few days. A few years ago the greenfinch population was devastated by this disease. It was this that inspired and drove Dick to design the feeders. 

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Design means that the food is kept dry and the detachable base on the seed feeders (it comes with 2) , means it is easy to swap the bases regularly. Birds are encouraged to perch and eat from the spaces that can easily be cleaned and, with the food dry, there is less risk of disease.

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