And yes, a bird table would present no difficulty to a rat, they are very agile. So not for me.
Actually I have bird stations, so not the old fashioned flat and roofed tables, they can get messy. So poles and hanging cages. The food stays nice and clean in these and is changed and cleaned by me twice a day.
Do have a small open bowl on the stations for my homemade bread that the larger birds are normally waiting for and clean up quickly every day along with mealworms during the winter months.
We always have blue tits in our boxes around the plot, that also are nicely protected and cleaned once flown.
Think some use these stations for being squirrel proof, but they also do make it all a cleaner feeding area.
Do clean the small drop, mainly form the pigeons that are messy eaters and a little drops to the ground.
Have a cctv camera on my plot and on my bird stations and never seen anything on there apart form birds for the ten years I've had plot cctv.
We do get a few foxes over the year that walk around the plot, but they keep to the paths oddly and are really just jumping fences between plots and gardens. The security lights push them out the plot at dusk when they seem to be most active. But luckily living near to the beach, their attraction is there rather than our plots. The road by the beach is often carrying a dead fox.
Me and my neighbours cats probably help also with keeping the birds on the move. But the feeding keeps them on the bird station, not the plot. So both work for me.
By the way I'm not on an allotment, but have a large garden dedicated plot. maybe allotments are more of an attraction.
