Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pentreath
Hi,
Not a post for the lovers of fluffy animals. Our garden is getting
rather over-run with grey squirrels. I've already changed the bird
feeder for the type with the tube inside a cage, which has defeated
them. But now I've found that they've taken to digging up plants as
part of their foraging, and in particular bulbs which they eat
(they've cleared one whole bed in two days). Seems that they also eat
songbird eggs and fledglings, and I'm getting worried that they'll get
into the roofspace of the house.
I've just been doing some research into the use of spring traps
(particularly the Fenn mk 4) within a suitably constructed artificial
tunnel with a constricted entrance to keep other species out (there
are no red squirrels around to be careful of). Does anyone have any
tips about this? I did look into live-capture cage traps, but on the
whole I think it's probably more stressful for the animal than a quick
clean kill, and in fact as pests it's illegal to release them
elsewhere anyway.
Cheers!
Martin
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I too have a lot of squirrels. I cover my veg deep beds with fine plastic netting which keeps them off [works with pigeons too!
I hang a strong bird feeder which has a perforated tube with pot top and bottom filled with peanuts just for the squirrels, it keeps them off the sunflowers feeders.
I have obserevd that when local populations grow too large something happens to make them disappear. I think the are subject to a certain desease. I never have to resort to killing. I suppose it depends what is meant by being 'overrun'. I can get up to 8 of them then, down to one or two which again builds over 2 or 3 years back up, then repeats.
OP