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Avid watchers of backyard birds appreciate the wisdom of having bird feeders as an integral part of the garden landscape.. The flipside of offering these kinds of feed dispensers is that they will unquestionably encourage the squirrels. If you want success at feeding wild birds, you should take a look at a squirrel proof bird feeder , or two. Prior to going any further, it is well worth taking a look at 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 a couple of pounds of food per week. They are great at climbing up a large number of materials, including bricks. The more difficult the accessibility to feed, the more they come to be super squirrels – seriously imaginative acrobats. They are rarely outwitted, yet they can be discouraged and distracted.

Give thought to the most effective feeder types and best location in your yard – always bearing in mind that squirrels will be able to leap as much as 10 feet across a gap, jump as high as 5 feet off the ground and are capable of falling 11 feet from a height!

Bird feeders can either be suspended or mounted on a pole. You could choose to suspend them from an isolated branch of a deciduous tree (which has less dense leaf-cover than pine) or you might consider hanging them from a wire in between two trees (although doing this makes refilling fairly difficult). Be sure to suspend your feeder from a metal chain or wire and hook, otherwise the squirrels can nibble through the cord to make the feeder fall to the ground.

A very good squirrel guard is a squirrel baffle . Made from either plastic or metal, the baffle makes an umbrella over the top of both suspended and pole-mounted bird feeders. The squirrels simply slide off them. Baffles could likewise be put about four feet above the ground underneath pole-mounted feeders – greasing the pole with Vaseline will also be effective.

Caged feeders are a very good option as they permit small backyard birds access to the feed, at the same time as excluding squirrels and larger birds as well.

You could try more advanced squirrel proof bird feeders. They are activated by weight. If a squirrel lands on one, a spring system causes a metal screen to come down around the feeder or its perches give way. Yet another, which is quite humorous to see, has a battery-driven motor that rotates the squirrel (harmlessly) off it.

Squirrels eat a vast assortment of foods, but an additional means to fend them off is to offer the birds safflower seed, thistle seed (niger), and /or pure suet (without seed), for the reason that they are simply not that keen on them.

However, you could look at this predicament from a totally different perspective and get hold of some squirrel feeders – that comes with trapeze, tightrope and springboard. You can easily give squirrels their favored foods in return for the squirrels putting on a remarkable circus spectacle for anyone watching. As a result while they are distracted, the birds get to eat as well – everybody comes out on top.

To be honest, squirrels will certainly always be a component of our backyard gardens, and with strategic planning of bird feeder types, positioning and types of bird food, we can guarantee not only that your backyard birds receive what they deserve but also that we are entertained by cheeky squirrel displays.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 at 5:59 am and is filed under Home and Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.