Hi, friends!
How is your day going? I am shaking my fist and cursing out the fucking squirrels.
I have a tray feeder mounted on my back deck rail. It’s a tray feeder – the squirrels chow down there constantly. I can’t keep them from destroying hanging feeders so I just set out a tray feeder. Good enough, the squirrels eat their fill and the birds enjoy the rest.
The little assholes chewed through the metal screen that is the bottom part of the tray (so it drains). I’ve had that feeder out for a little over a year and this morning I look out the window and it’s ruined. And not just a little hole. No no. Those fuckers chewed open a section that is the size of my hand. There were little segments of metal wire all over the rail.
I got nothing. We’re getting freezing rain tomorrow and Thursday so I’m not getting a new feeder until the weekend. Good job squirrels, you’ve just destroyed your food source!
Hmmm, you reminded me that my squirrel hasn’t set off my doorbell cam today. He hides nuts in a pot in front of my door about 230-4 each day. I got my wife a window feeder & it took the birds awhile to find it but now we have nonstop visitors the other creatures can’t access. Though I did get a flicker that was too big for it.
https://www.chewy.com/petfusion-tranquility-window-bird/dp/150875
I’ve never been able to get birds to use a window feeder. Glad it’s working for you.
@MemeWeaver it took several weeks and we put a cup of seeds on a water fountain nearby to get their attention. Now they empty it about every other day & we have a pretty good variety of birds. Most smaller varieties but random Steller’s Jays & occassional flicker try to use it. My daughter made a colored roof cover for it and that might have helped to get some bird attention. Keep trying.
I put a bunch of black walnuts and Osage oranges on my porch for the tree rats. The walnuts must have gone hinky, because they only went after the Osage oranges.
My father used to feed a very tame squirrel. One day the doorbell rang, my son who was maybe three years old said ” it’s the squirrel Poppy, you didn’t feed it today”. Yup, it was the squirrel, standing on the back of a chair, ringing the doorbell.
Many years later when my father lived with us he warned us about tree rats. But he meant rats who climb trees. We scoffed. We were wrong.
https://www.vulcantermite.com/pest-profiles/can-rats-climb/#:~:text=Rodents%20have%20a%20vertical%20leap,they'll%20probably%20try%20again.
If you ever go to Hawaii, take notice of the metal bands around all the coconut trees. They do that because the rats climb the trees & chew the coconut stems so they fall on the ground. When I was a kid a woman parked her baby in the shade of a tree & a coconut fell & killed the baby. You are liable for any damages from coconuts if you own a tree & don’t either band it or cut all the coconuts off before they get big. Huge lawsuits!
#TIL!
Rats love palm trees, and of course that’s one thing we have tons of here. Yup, literal tree rats.
I never knew this!
We have a gaggle of squirrels that live in our yard and they’ll rip into our garbage and scatter it across the lawn. You’d expect to have to keep dogs or bears or possums or raccoons out of your garbage. No, it’s squirrels. Fuzzy bastards.
I recommend getting some hot pepper suet for your tray feeder. They will only eat it once and never bother the feeder again.
But what about the woodpeckers that eat at the other suet feeders? Will they try the tray feeder and get themselves hurt?
That’s the beauty of hot pepper. It only affects mammals.
i tried putting a feeder out for the little birdies…just a little one high up where its not an accidental cat feeder
but…the crows stole it….and i dont mean stole the food…they took the whole damn feeder
after retrieving it from around the neighbourhood a couple times i gave up….sorry little birdies…you’re on your own
I had a feeder hanging from a hook, it was a squirrel buster, too, so they couldn’t access THE SOURCE, but whatever seed was in the base, they’d finish off. One smart ass would climb it, then jump off real quick sending a spray of seeds out in every direction. He’d do that until it was empty. They know we refill it :/
I changed it from the hook to hanging off the “ceiling” of my upstairs neighbor’s balcony. Since I am in a condo, I keep waiting for some HOA Nazi shit to tell me it can’t be there (they are evaluating the condition of our balconies & patios “this year” which has been the last 2 yrs). Then I might have to change it to the one that sticks to the window. But since I’ve been hanging it from the ceiling, the squirrels & chippies can’t get to it.