Couldn’t keep the damn squirrels off my bird feeder! It’s hanging on a slender metal pole, which stymied them for while, but they discovered that they can climb it with some difficulty. Must be worth it, because once they were up there the feeder would be empty in no time.
They stay away WHEN the dog is outside, but the fact there is a dog isn’t enough to keep them away. There’s dogs on either side too, so they’re used to them.
And there are plenty of solutions that scare off squirrels, but that would also scare off the birds.
So, I decided to have a little fun with it.
I got a $10 Airsoft pistol off Amazon, and set up to work (I work from home many days) in the dining room with the window wide open.
Every time a squirrel showed up on the patio or wood pile below the feeder, I popped 'em on the ass with an Airsoft pellet.
That was last week…I’ve been sitting here all morning, and not one of those little bastards has come within 20’ of the house. Which, not coincidentally, is about the range at which I can hit a squirrel.
Dude, just grease the metal pole with WD-40 or some kind of oil. Watching them try to shimmy the pole only to inevitably slide back down as they madly clutch the pole is comedy gold.
…where the heck were you when I was Googling for solutions?!? I have some spray-on lithium grease. I’ll hit it with that next time I go out.
Same result either way, isn’t it?
Haha, I did just have one scouting out on the ground and thinking about it, twitching is tail like crazy. He decided it wasn’t worth it and bailed out.
Now I should try to get the chipmunks out of the woodpile and from under the patio. They’re just so darn cute, though.
I have them defeated and frustrated for over a year, no squirrels where harmed in the process.
On/around the pole I have a slinky (secured at the top, and stretched/deformed a bit on the top to extend most of the coils about 1 foot below the bottom of the feeder)
The squirrels climb up, hit the slinky and most of them go straight down and give up. For those determined squirrels who manage to cling on through the slinky and grip the pole (using a lot of energy) they also run onto a ‘cone’ that was cut from the top of a 5 gal water bottle which is also placed over the pole (and the slinky passed though the hole). This cone is tied with a short rope around the top of it to the top of the pole. It is hung about a foot below the bottom of the feeder.
When the squirrel gets into the cone, I can see it’s struggling to hold on and doesn’t know how to proceed. Grip fails and down it goes. I saw once the little guy try to grip the cone on the top but just managed to fall as he reached.
When I was about 12 I had the job of protecting the cherry trees from squirrels with a Daisy BB gun. It works as long as your patience is greater than the persistence of all the squirrels.
Not unlike the way I keep the cats off the bookcases and mantel, except I use a Nerf gun to avoid the “pellets all over the floor” problem. Discourages the animals, improves your concentration…win, win.
Do you paint a rodent silhouette under the window each time?
I have a dedicated squirrel feeder. You put dried corn on the cob on it. I have a Bluejay whose been tormenting the squirrels. Bluejays are evil. They don’t want the corn. Just want to be little SOBs.
But, yeah, Grease the pole.
After many failures of so-called squirrel-proof feeders, I found this one. The perch is adjustable for weight, so if a squirrel or even a large bird gets that far, its weight shuts the feed ports. The domed top prevents squirrels from hanging from the feeder’s top, and the top twists to lock to the bottom portion, so the clever little fuckers can’t get into it. It’s been several years now, and they haven’t been able to defeat it.
We tried spending $$$ on squirrel proof bird feeders, but eventually the damn raccoons destroyed those expensive feeders. We finally gave up and just feed birds and squirrels, although that means going through 50 pounds of sunflower a week.
This weekend I’m setting up my havaharts to catch the two raccoons that have been eating too much. I’ll relocate them and hopefully be raccoon free for a year or two.
I buy bulk roasted peanuts and put them out in the winter for all comers, which means squirrels, scrub jays and crows for the most part. It’s a real scrum in the morning.
Please don’t do this. Birds often land on feeder poles before hitting the feeder (particularly woodpeckers, nuthatches and the like). It gums up their feathers and is almost impossible for them to clean off.
You may not care but it’s not particularly good for the squirrels either. Would you lick WD40 off your “paws?”
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My wife tried to grease the pole with Vaseline*, but it didn’t take long for the squirrels to wear it all off. And constantly regreasing the pole turned into a chore of its own. We just wound up buying a squirrel-proof feeder, which was pricey but it works.
NOTE: When your wife asks “Do we have any Vaseline?” She probably doesn’t have the same thing in mind that you had in mind.
Ah, the All American solution to everything–shoot it!
Found a dead squirrel under my carport, plugged with a BB straight through the left eye. It pissed me off because this is MY property and I have first dibs on shooting shit.
As long as your feeder pole is 10’ from anything (tree limb, overhang, windowsill) that a squirrel could leap from, you can solve your “problem” with a cone baffle (about $20+/-). It needs to be about 5’ up the pole (and feeders can’t hang much below it) or a squirrel can just jump straight up.
I’m watching mine work (just as it has for 10 years) as I type this.
We have Fox Squirrels (there’s 5 out there at the moment) and Red Squirrels (hmmm… only see two right now)
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