What's wrong with my feeder

[Janec]

Thanks Madmills and artdemole,
I'll try lengthening the chains and see if that works.
We've got lots of other feeders around the garden and so we have lots of blue, great, coal, long-tailed tits and marsh/willow tits (can't tell them apart)
and lots of goldfinches and chaffinchs although I can't remember when I last saw a greenfinch. We also get tree creepers, nuthatches and two woodpeckers, green and the other one (senior moment, can't remember what they're called.)
It's just these sparrows I'm trying to attract back. I miss them chirruping in the hedge by the house. They are feeding from a seed feeder further down the garden so they are getting their food, this is all for our benefit
We have sited all the feeders in trees or by bushes but it's a balancing act to get them the right distance for the birds and too far away for the rats to jump to. I was surprised to see the young ones run straight up this pole but I found that greasing the pole stopped them and gave us a laugh
We do have a sparrowhawk visit regularly which although I don't like to see it catch anything I know it means we have a healthy small bird population. I can cope when it flys off with it's catch but when it sits on the lawn by the kitchen window plucking things its a bit grim
Thanks again and I'm sure with everyones help and suggestions we'll get it sorted.

[actionfinch]

If you could get hold of a small tree stump they like that as well to feed from.
I got one from work , hey fell a couple of trees, and i sprinkle bird seed on that , they seem to love it .
They like my hanging tray but prefer the log and the bird table...

[Janec]

Thanks actionfinch,
I'm sure they'd love it, trouble is, so will the rats
We used to have a big table on a tree trunk in this position and everybody loved it but we developed a major rat problem. As we're bunny huggers and try to avoid killing anything, by careful re-positioning of feeders we've managed to move them down the garden away from the house. Trouble is the sparrows moved with them.
I'm trying to find a way of feeding sparrows by the house and not the rodents which means no food dropping on the the lawn.
I've adapted the feeder yet again but still unliked by the sparrows. I think they definitely need a big flat surface so I think I need to build them a seperate feeder/table. I'd like to build a wooden table on a wooden pole. Does anyone know how big the top would need to be to stop the rats getting on it? How much overhang can they defeat? How long is the average rat's reach?
Any rat measurers out there?