How to feed the Woodpecker and not the squirrel
Oct 30th, 2007 by Birdy Trish
The grey squirrel is becoming too cheeky and at home in my garden for my liking. Sometimes I feel I could happily kill it. It appears from nowhere and has taken over.
My problem has been if I make the peanut feeder squirrel proof then I make the peanut feeder woodpecker proof as well. So I’ve been leaving the peanut feeder alone and hoping that the woodpecker will take its turn. But it’s just gone too far. I’m fed up with it. The squirrel is taking all the nuts. We can see it from our kitchen window - it’s acting as though it owns the garden.
It’s been wonderful to catch glimpses of a colourful woodpecker and I do want to help it. During the summer, before the squirrel arrived, the woodpecker came to our peanut feeder and it was magical to see. I don’t think I ever managed to get a photo of it though. But I can still see it in my minds eye, so I suppose that’s all that matters. I caught a glimpse of it the other day in the canopy of the trees - a flash of red and it was gone.
As much as I’m a bit fed up of having to do extra work to feed birds I think the answer is going to be:
- To get MOM (My old man) to drill 1″ holes into a piece of wood - say a small log. Fill the holes with suet and hang it from a branch. Keep it filled up all the time. This is for the woodpecker.
- Dig - deep into my pocket and buy a squirrel proof peanut feeder. The woodpecker won’t be able to get in to get any peanuts, but all the smaller birds will be able to reclaim this peanut feeder as their own. SQUIRREL IS BEATEN
There are two reasons I’m doing this:
- Winter is fast approaching and I don’t want the squirrel to get fatter and the birds to starve ‘cos the squirrels managed to get to all the food.
- I don’t want the squirrel to bring a family of squirrels to my feeders next year. Perish the thought!
I’ll have to catch my old man in a good mood. I think he thought that after he’d put the barn own box up and then, months later, helped to clean it out that that was the end of his ‘bird’ jobs. Now I’m going to get him to drill some holes in a piece of wood and then hang it from a tree - hope he understands . I’ve just remembered it’s time of year for him to climb the ladder and take the wooden bird boxes down from the trees. This is so I can clean them out. It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since we were doing it last year.
I clean the bird nests out so that, during the cold winter, the nest boxes can be used as roosts. If there is old nesting material, and maybe a young dead bird then disease could spread.
Don’t take too much notice of my problems. Feeding birds is usually easy. There are so many shops and garden centres that sell good quality bird seed. Then pop the seed on a bird table, a ledge or on a dish on the ground. Job done.
Tags: peanut-feeder, squirrel, squirrels, woodpecker
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I too have had difficulty with squirrels - there are at least 6 of them in our garden and have prevented the jay from helping himself to the monkey nuts as the squirrels take everything - as quite alot of birds are ground feeders such as yellowhammers and collard doves they were also missing out because the squirrels would eat all their food too - and the fat balls they would eat - it was costing me a fortune.
My husband came to the rescue and we now have a beautiful bird table that the squirrels just cannot get access to. It has driven them crazy and has been out for most of the winter to no avail to any of the squirrels - so now two jays regulary turn up for their monkey nuts - the nut hatch turns up on the nut feeder (not squirrel proof but he can’t get to it - and the woodpecker feeds on the bird table too). Siskins, great tits, coal tits, robins blackbirds, collard doves are enjoying a squirrel free zone.
it is such a good design and we are confident will be very popular
and are trying to get it marketed at the moment.
well
can you reveal the design of the bird table? I’ve been trying to think of a way of stopping our squirrels raiding our bird table too.
Don’t forget you can get squirrel proof nut feeders that don’t exclude any birds, and just uses the squirrels own weight against it. When the squirrel jumps on the feeder, the feeder is on a spring mechanism that simply closes it, like this one: http://www.thegardenersshop.co.uk/squirrel-proof-bird-feeder-guaranteed-537-p.asp
I too have trouble with Grey Squirrels.
The answer is to shoot them. (18 so far).
I no longer have the pests, and now have lots of birds visiting the bird tables.