Sacha wrote:
On 2009-05-07 08:38:38 +0100, RJBL said:

Bill Smith wrote:
Our garden backs onto a strip of municipal woodland. We have a metal
support for hanging cage-type bird feeders, and attract a good number
and variety of small birds.

We also attract many pigeons, which can't properly cope with the cage
around the feeders, but also three or four grey squirrels which pay a
visit several times a day.

They don't tend to go for the bird seed feeder, but go instead for
the peanut feeder, having learnt to clamber inside the cage part and
feed upside-down on the peanuts in an inner, small-meshed cage. A
pack of peanuts costs me 99p, and one, thanks almost entirely to the
squirrels, lasts a day at the most.

Spraying the metal pole with WD-40 stops the squirrels as they
slither around and can't climb it, but this lasts only a couple of
days, and costs more than the peanuts if I kept refreshing the WD-40.
I suspect that someting other than WD-40, such as soap or an oil,
would no last much longer before the little critters are able to shin
up the pole again. (The pole etc is not near a tree of fence, but the
squirrels cross the lawn to it and race up it - amusing the first few
times, but now infuriating!

Can anyone suggest a low-cost deterrent which will not harm the
squirrels but would allow the other birds (Most of which seem to
prefer peanuts to wild bird seed) to feed on the peanuts?

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Bill.
Try your local garden centre for a 'Squirel baffle' to fit on your
bird feeder - its sort of like a clear plastic hemisphere which fits
onto the upright - Gardman make them(?) About twenty quid. They work.

Hope this helps

rjbl

Just the sort of thing I was trying to describe. And this is a clever
seed feeder:
http://www.gardman.co.uk/asp/birds/f...ist-feeder.asp

I didn't find squirrel baffles there but I did find them he
http://www.jacobijayne.co.uk/squirre...uirrel-guards/

Thanks for the pointer, Highly useful.

Actually I am not now convinced that it is truly cost effective actually
to do anything about protecting the bird feeders from squirrels.
Watching our 4 regulars I observe that :-

They feed at very regular times of day; early morning and early evening;

Between then the take out about 10% of the contents of the peanut feeder
per diem

In the long term - several years - they don't appear to damage the
feeder by hanging upside down from it and nibbling at the contents.

Not sure that the level of loss really justifies the cost of protection
and the loss of pleasure evoked by their antics.

Mind you, squirrels is very partial to home-grown strawberries (like
some black labrador dogs I've known). Protection of your strawberry crop
is well worth the cost.

For those firearms-freaks out there, who seem only to be interested in
the concept of 'garden as gallery-range', squirrels are best caught and
killed by hand, gutted, crisply and aromatically fried, skewered and
eaten like hot lollipops. When the blood lust takes you, get on the
flight to Pudong Intl and marvel to the sight of seven million
Shanghainese nibblin' squirrel on a Bank Holiday

rjbl