feeding robins with live mealworms problems

I'm feeding robins in my garden with, as the header says, live mealworms. Which is great, the robins love them, but ....
Always, there is a but .....

I have a plastic fifty gallon barrel at the top my garden under the cover of a huge Sycamore tree.
I have some idea of the robins' comings and goings and I time the putting out of mealworms accordingly, served up in a small shallow dish, on top of the barrel, and I'm not usually waiting very long before they appear. They almost always turn up singularly, although I have seen two redbreasts together.

Okay, problem;

I go to check on the mealworms after a robin, or robins have fed, to make sure they haven't all been eaten, and when I get there, mealworms have got out of the dish and are heading, in all directions, for the rim of the barrel.
Is there something I can do to keep the mealworms on the top of that barrel ?

Suggestions please.

 

Wonder if copper tape would work around the edge? I know copper tape has been used to keep slugs and snails off pots. I see they don't like citrus, perhaps paint the edges with lemon juice?

 

Maybe give the mealworms a meal to distract them? Maybe sprinkle some ground oats on the dish?

 

How about a shallow dish with vertical sides,if you can get one.

 

I would feed them in a dish that had a rim to prevent them climbing out. You might be able to fashion one with some cardboard if you don't have a suitable dish. You could just place a cardboard collar on top of a deeper dish, with the horizontal lip meaning even the best climbing would have no hope of escape.

 

Wow! Thanks guys.
Yeah, the thought of trying Copper-tape.
Was wondering about that earlier.

The dish is round, with a vertical rim, it's about an inch deep.

I DID buy some mealworms last year, can't remember where from, that came in a plastic tub, with a small amount of worm-food in it.
Don't know if that would keep them in the dish.

Am in the process of putting together some kind of bird-box to shelter the dish from the wind.
Could try lining that with cardboard I suppose.

I could maybe squirt a small amount of lemon-juice around the rim of the platform that the dish sits on.

Why does everything HAVE TO BE SO COMPLICATED ?

 

As a test, why not get some kitchen foil and fashion it around your dish so it has some vertical sides to it, say about 25mm, and see if that holds them in but allows the birds to get to them.

We tend to use dried mealworms , but pre-soaked or placed out in a bowl of water.

 

Try and make the side's of a dish taper inwards

 

That's interesting 101,
Do "robins" eat your pre-soaked dried mealworms ?
Would make things a lot easier.