I redesigned the entire interior of the feeder to make it smaller, easier to build, cheaper and somewhat ironically more reliable. I've already had a few problems that I hope I've fixed.

The place I get peanuts changed suppliers or something and the peanuts are a bit bigger now. I had to cut away a bit of the baffle over the dispense opening once I found an entire hopper of peanuts jammed above it thanks to a few finger-sized peanuts that got stuck.

I want to change the design yet again to put the deposit hole in front of where the nuts get dispensed. I think this will increase the likelyhood of accidental deposits and the chance that the birds see the result (getting a nut) so they can reason it out. 

I initially moved the deposit chute away from the dispense opening so dispensed nuts would not find their way into the deposit chute. This happened once when I was still on shelled peanuts and pigeons. The dispense cup had a few peanuts in it and the ones coming out were bouncing off them into the deposit chute causing more peanuts to come out. 

The next design will not dispense nuts onto the platform - the nuts will stay witiin the enclosure and it will have a larger dispense opening (50x100mm) facing forward so birds can see and reach in easily. The deposit opening will be in front of thiis opening at its center.

This change is more about getting results from the birds than any mechanical or material efficiency. I've noticed that while jackdaws walk around on the platform and accidentally deposit sometimes, magpies typically stick ot the rim of the platform and seem to avoid walking on it. Hopefully this change will lure them closer and increase the chance they associate deposit with dispense.

Since I can rotate the dispense opening on my current design I can take a bit of a shortcut and just lower the dispense baffles so the nuts stay within the dispenser.

Then I can rotate the opening closer to the deposit hole. The birds will take a good look inside to make sure they didn't miss anything. Moving dispense and deposit closer together will require the magpies to walk on the platform to get to the nuts, and have a higher chance of accidentally depositing and figuring out the cause and effect.