We’ve had a love-hate relationship with our suet feeder ever since I gave it to my wife and installed it several years ago for Christmas. Her desk is in front of the kitchen window, and I hang the feeder from a branch of the tree that overhangs the deck. We love that it’s high enough so that she can sit and still see what’s going on, and we hate when antisocial animals empty a few day’s supply in a matter of hours.
I also love the ability to get pictures when there’s not much else to photograph. Like these, for instance:
Obviously, the local wildlife doesn’t get that this is meant to be a BIRD feeder. They also wonder why so many birds get in their way when they want to feed on the sunflower seed. But that’s the subject of a different post.
Over time we have adapted the hanging arrangement to try to thwart the local squirrels and racoons. We’ve tried:
- Wiring the basket directly to a branch (newbie error!)
- Throwing a string over a branch, hanging the feeder at one end
- Using thicker string at the top to stop the varmints chewing through the string
- Using thick electrical lamp cord at the top to stop them chewing through the thick string
- Using thin electric wire instead of string when they worked out they could cut the string at the bottom end instead of the top
- Threading the top wire through several drinking straws to make it harder to haul it up
- Replacing the straws with heavy fence wire because the straws didn’t work
- Threading the heavy fence wire through a plastic lid to stop them reaching around to haul it up
- Threading the heavy fence wire through a giant coffee tin because the lids scarcely slowed anyone down.
That pretty much holds the squirrels at bay, but the racoons still manage to haul it up. However they operate at night, so I added a carabiner and I bring the actual basket in at night now. Unfortunately a nearby branch recently grew sturdy enough for squirrels to get close and jump to the basket so I cut off part of the branch leaving only the flimsiest of twigs, but some of the flimsier squirrels still venture forth occasionally.
We had one squirrel who could (before the coffee can) get down to the feeder by using both the up and down wires, but once he let go of the “up” wire to eat, he could not get enough grip to get back up the single wire. He would eventually let go and drop nine feet to the deck. Didn’t learn from this experience either – he came back over and over.
So here we are with a temporary truce. So long as the squirrels only get to the feeder with a supreme effort (and provide us with entertainment) we don’t mind the odd incursion. However, as you might have gathered from the blog photo, there has been a new development – a racoon in broad daylight. While I’ve seen the results of a racoon hauling the feeder up into the tree the next morning, I’ve never seen how they do it, and reaching around the coffee can while clinging to a branch and not letting go of the wire is quite an achievement.
Naturally, I took lots of photographs before I shooed her away, and she hasn’t returned in daylight since, although “someone” had a try at the sunflower seeds that evening.
Here are some of the racoon photographs for you to enjoy, and a short collage video of the racoon, a squirrel and a robin, showing how each animal finds different solutions to the universal problem of getting enough to eat.
