We have birds, chipmunks and squirrels at the feeders all day and usually, the chipmunks are eating right along with the birds. The white-tail deer hang around the feeder too, especially in the winter. During the summer and fall, a black bear will come every once in a while, in the dark of night and drag the birdfeeder down the path into the woods. My husband is always able to find it. We love to feed them all.
Add hot peppers to the bird feed. Seriously. Bird have not not evolved the ability to react to capsaicin, squirrels have. We used to hang suet cakes in the back yard; squirrels would demolish them in a day until we found a brand that had hot peppers mixed in.
Southern California squirrels must be dumb or lazy, because all I needed to do to keep them out of the bird feeder was add a domed clear plastic rain guard to the top. They still hang out underneath waiting for the birds to drop stuff, but I haven’t seen one on the tray for about a year. The feeder hangs from the lowest branch of a tree, so there’s no way to jump up and the guard doesn’t let them climb down, and so far none of them are coordinated enough to jump down at an angle.
Aw, gee…a limb came down today and smashed the crap out of my feeder.
Maybe since it’s summer I’ll let the birds fend for themselves. I don’t get nearly the crowd I did in the winter.
Except hummingbirds! Definitely want a hummingbird feeder this year.