I need advice. Please be gentle and know that every decision I’ve made along the way to this predicament was because I wanted to help struggling urban wildlife.
I live in a two story apartment building in a fairly big city. I have a very small patio situation, which I dont really use besides for feeding birds and giving them water via a bird bath. Many birds live here year-long and visit my patio throughout the day. I see lots of migrating birds too at certain times of year. Autumn and winter especially are popular seasons, but I see plenty of baby birds during the spring too.
These past few weeks, when I open my door to restock the feeder, birds literally come greet me!
Well, squirrels come here too, and very rarely have I been able to prevent them from raiding the feeder. Often I just accept that there’s nothing to do about it, especially since there are ground feeding birds that can’t eat from my feeder. It’s gotten to the point however, that the ground feeding birds are forced to not only compete with the squirrels, but ultimately must relinquish the lion’s share to them.
But it’s worse than that—the squirrels now definitely associate me with the delicious seeds that I dispense every day. They crowd by the door and climb along the windows, looking for me. Now they’ve even located my second-story bedroom window and climb around on the window screen, loudly. It’s very loud and disturbing.
I’m distraught and I can’t even feed the birds now, because the squirrels just wait around. I feel bad for the birds, I feel bad for the squirrels.
I’ve already tried fancy squirrel-proof feeders, but the narrowness of my patio means they can jump from the neighbors’ tree and wrestle with the feeder until it dumps even just one seed on the ground, which is also a noisy and disruptive struggle. Plus it’s not like I don’t want the squirrels to eat.
I feel terrible, all I wanted was to help wildlife out. I’m afraid to just abruptly stop, because then what would happen to them all?
I know I’ve made mistakes - but what do I do now??
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Give cayenne powder a try. Birds can’t perceive capsaicin but squirrels can. It won’t hurt them, only deter them from that food source. I use it to protect my bird feeders.
They also hate anything that’s strongly scented. Garlic, onions, some flowers, and essential oils all work.
Horseradish is pretty effective too.
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Worst case, I’m reasonably certain all the wildlife involved will be able to sustain themselves even if you stop feeding abruptly.
I’ve seen that Mark Rober fellow’s squirrel Olympics or whatever those videos are called.
scatter some seeds off the balcony
i’m not certain, but the squirrels might opt for the food that comes with less climbing. if they’re harrasing you, let them see you dop it, get them to associate food with not climbing up to your balcony. Then you may be able to feed the birds without the squirls getting in the way.
I’ve already tried fancy squirrel-proof feeders
I’m convinced there’s no such thing as a squirrel-proof bird feeder. If a bird can get to it so can a squirrel.
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For now, you probably should just let the feeders go empty and clean up any piles of left over seeds and wait until the squirrels go somewhere else.
If there are outside cats in the neighborhood, you could try getting a realistic looking toy cat that can be set out on the patio to encourage the squirrels to go elsewhere. If you know what kinds of local birds of prey are in the area, life size toys and statues of them could be used. Remove the decoy predators for a day or two before you want to refill the bird feeders.
In the future, if you can’t find a type of feeder or something to add to the bird feed to make the squirrels move onto a different source of food, then try to keep the feeders only partially filled and refill them at random intervals of time.
hmmm… if the tops of the bird feeders are visible from the view of a flying bird AND squirrels… you could try to research stickers/decals that reflect light in waves that birds can see that squirrels can’t. Leave the decal visible when the feeder has food in it and cover/remove it up when you’re leaving the feeder empty for a bit.
If the tops of the feeders would be visible to birds and not squirrels you could try refilling the feeders with random periods of being empty BUT when there is food present you put a brightly colored sticker on top that the birds should be able to see. Remove or cover the sticker when the feeder is on an empty cycle.
