I left the feeder unattended in timer mode for 3 days, then switched it to normal mode. The gang of four pigeons that frequented the V2 feeder have dominated the V3 feeder. Unfortunately they have become pretty territorial. A couple of them seem to remember the old feeder and picked it up again quickly. 

Since I'm stuck with them for now I want to see how far I can get with them while I figure out how to fix the situation.

Instead just of leaving bottlecaps and butts on the platform to train them, I put them in a 50mm pvc pipe with a cap and a bit cut away so caps can come out. They jam a bit and have to be pulled out. I was thinking this is one step closer to getting them to bring a cap from elsewhere. Within an hour they were pulling out caps and getting a few in the hole.

I added a short video to the file section: https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1847547904515136/bottlecap_magazine.mp4

Putting the caps in a pipe like this not only makes the birds work a little more deliberately once they start to understand there is a connection between the caps/butts and getting food. I put about 20 caps in and the pigeons emptied it 4 times today.