Sunday, January 4, 2009

Life at the Feeder...

I recently hung a bird feeder near the house. Like the bird bath, it took about a week for the little critters to find it, but now that they have, it's like Bird Wars 2009! They drained the entire feeder in an afternoon. The cardinals don't seem eager to join the fray; they just sit in a nearby bush & observe.

Unfortunately, the little birds are very wasteful & scatter most of the seed on the ground. The Law of Unintended Consequences has thus provided a means of sustenance for some other little critters that I'd prefer to be without...

I'm thinking of trying out the "brick" style feeders, so the little darlings can't scatter as much. Interestingly, the squirrels haven't bothered it. I think they're just biding their time. I suppose they could chew through the cord holding it on the tree & drop the whole thing to the ground.
...
A few years ago, I gave my dad a nice "varmit-proof" bird feeder for Christmas with stained-glass panels on the top. The squirrels chewed through the lead to dislodge one of the panels to get to the seed!
...
Hopefully, Tennessee squirrels are dumber than Georgia squirrels!

4 comments:

Fr. Christian Mathis said...

my experience is that tennessee squirrels are persistent creatures when it comes to birdseed. You can always resort to the method of one of my former pastors which was to throw cookies at the squirrels when he saw them in the act of vandalism. He usually missed, but it did get the squirrels to temporarily lose interest in the birdseed in favor of a peanut butter cookie!

Mark G. said...

Father, you left a response as I was still cleaning up the post!

Yes, I really don't have any hopes of thwarting the little vandals, but as long as I can prevent them from completely destroying the feeder, I'll be content.

Anonymous said...

Use sunflower seeds in your bird feeder. The cardinals really like them and it takes longer for all the littled winged creatures to empty out the feeder.
Wish our bird feeder litter attracted a chipmonk. We just get the more "rat" looking squirrels.

Mark G. said...

Yeah, he just sits underneath & lets the seeds rain down on him. The cats have gotten lazy about keeping them cleared out.