This year I’m hoping to encourage more wildlife into my garden. I do put out feed for the birds but squirrels have made light work of many of the feeders I’ve tried along the way. The seed-feeder I’m using at the moment seems to be the only one that the squirrels don’t demolish! However I want to expand the culinary delights on offer, so not a girl to shy away from a little shopping I thought it was time to buy some new feeders.
With the squirrels in mind I have opted for two feeders that claim to be ‘squirrel resistant’ (we will see). One is for peanuts and the other is for fat balls. I have only filled them half full to start with because I don’t want food sitting there for a long time uneaten.
It’s important to clean out feeders regularly and replace food that has been in there for sometime. Whilst cleaning out my seed-feeder I soon realised it isn’t as squirrel proof as I thought! Will these rodents stop at nothing. I will patch it up, fill it up and send it back out into battle. I know you maybe thinking “didn’t she want to encourage wildlife into the garden?”, the thing is if squirrels gobble up all the food there is nothing left for the birds and for me my feathered friends provide the promise of fewer pests in the garden. I’m clearly a NIMBY as far as squirrels go.
I would love to report whilst sat on my kitchen work surface typing this post that I am gazing at 3 feeders that have beautiful little birds feeding at them. Instead I look out to see a b#!@£y great big squirrel dangling from one of them…. the cheek of it. Right, this is not the last you will hear about my bird feeding saga.
If you have any fail-safe squirrel proof feeding tips do let me know.
For more tips on feeding birds and encouraging them into your garden I would highly recommend you check out the RSPB site.
