A squirrel gets a snack at a birdfeeder. (Photo courtesy Nancy Holmes)
This has been a great winter for birdfeeders with generous roofs. Every time it rains or snows, birdfeeders with wide roofs are the restaurants of choice for the feathered folk.
The feeders that hang outside, with a little feeding tray under the bottom, and a matching little roof on top, are just winter ornaments until hungry birds get to work digging snow out of the feeder trays to reach the seeds. If seed gets wet, it may clump into a soggy or frozen mass instead of flowing out onto the feeder tray. The feeder may be full, but the birds fly in eagerly, check the clogged or frozen tray, and fly away, hungry.
Squirrels can help keep birdfeeders clear of ice and snow, but they don’t venture far in deep snow, and they don’t work for free. They eat until their little white tummies bulge. When the snow gets a few inches deep, they can’t run fast enough between trees to be safe from hawks and foxes.
Sometimes there are fox tracks in the snow. Foxes’ long legs give them a big advantage over hopping squirrels, but the squirrels like to work near buildings where the shy foxes won’t go, and squirrels are geniuses at outwitting human attempts to keep them off birdfeeders.
I had a good feeder with a roof that extended over the seed shelf, so it never clogged with wet and frozen seed. A wide tray under the feeder caught dropped seeds, and stopped the rare squirrels who managed to climb up the slippery PVC plastic pole. A hole in the bottom of the tray, covered with hardware cloth, drained rainwater.
Squirrels gnawed footsteps in the PVC. I cut a hole in the bottom of a 5-gallon bucket and slipped it upside down over the PVC pipe, under the tray and feeder, so that if a squirrel did make it up the pole, it would be inside the bucket. I thought squirrels wouldn’t chew hardware cloth, but they easily snipped out enough plastic they could pull the wire out of their way.
Are sunflower seeds irresistible, or do squirrels enjoy solving puzzles? Both?
(Nancy Holmes prowled Linekin Neck in Boothbay as a child, then an Illinois bottomland while earning a master’s degree in wildlife management. Once back in Maine, she raised children and kept assorted animals, wild and domestic. She and her Carolina dog roam their woods in Newcastle. Write to Holmes at castlerock@tidewater.net.)
