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Backyard Birds: Helpful Tips To Stop Squirrels From Taking Bird Food From Bird Feeders
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Someone who appreciates viewing backyard birds will certainly understand how priceless wild bird feeders are for bringing them into your backyard garden. Now wherever there is bird food there is likely to be squirrels; whether you want them or not. If you want success at feeding wild birds, you will need to check out a squirrel proof bird feeder , or two. Prior to going any further, it is well worth reviewing what we know about squirrel habits.
Squirrels are agile, bold and persistent. They are rodents; consequently their teeth never quit growing and adults need up to two pounds of food per week. They are proficient at scaling a large variety of surfaces, including brickwork. The more challenging the access to feed, the more they turn into ninja squirrels – really ingenious athletes. They are rarely outwitted, but they can be discouraged and distracted.
Look at the very best feeder types and optimal location in your yard – always considering that squirrels can easily jump up to ten feet over a gap, leap as high as five feet from the ground and are happy falling 11 feet from a height!
Bird feeders can either be hanging or mounted on a pole. Choose to hang them from an isolated branch of a deciduous tree (because it has less thick leaf-cover than pine) or you might try out suspending them from a wire between two trees (however this makes refilling fairly hard). Be sure to hang the feeder from a metal chain or wire and hook, otherwise the squirrels could bite through the cord to make the feeder fall to the ground.
A good squirrel guard is a squirrel baffle . Manufactured from either plastic or metal, the baffle makes an umbrella above both hanging and pole-mounted bird feeders. The squirrels simply slide off them. Baffles can also be set up about four feet above the ground beneath pole-mounted feeders – greasing the pole with Vaseline will also be effective.
Caged feeders are a good choice because they permit smaller backyard birds access to the feed, at the same time as keeping out squirrels and larger birds as well.
You can always opt for more high tech squirrel proof bird feeders. They are triggered by the weight of the squirrel. If a squirrel jumps on one, a spring mechanism causes a metal shield to fall over the feeder or the feeder’s perches give way. Another type of feeder, which is also really humorous to observe, has a battery-driven motor that spins the squirrel (safely) off it.
Squirrels eat a huge range of foods, but one more technique to keep them away is to supply the birds safflower seed, thistle seed (niger), and /or pure suet (without seed), due to the fact squirrels are simply not particularly keen on them.
Of course, you can look at this situation from a totally different perspective and get hold of some squirrel feeders – complete with trapeze, tightrope and springboard. You can easily provide squirrels their preferred foods in return for them putting on a great circus show for you. So while they are preoccupied, the birds get to have a feed as well – everybody is a winner.
To be honest, squirrels will always be a part of backyard gardens, and when combined with strategic organizing of bird feeder types, placement and bird food types, we can make certain not only that your backyard birds secure what they deserve but also that we are kept amused by hilarious squirrel tricks.
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