On Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:41:53 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

On 28/07/2012 16:28, Moonraker wrote:

I am heartily sick of squirrels getting the lion's share of my bird
food. As fast as I get rid of squirrels new ones come to replace them.
Has anyone experience of those for sale? If so which are useless and
which are good? The only problem that I can see is that the pair of
woodpeckers (well I say pair maybe they are just friends) will be unable
to feed. any help most welcomed. TIA

I have a standard bird feeder but use the threaded hole on the underside
to attach it to the top of a 15mm copper pipe (using standard cheap
compression plumbing fittings - the official kit is overpriced).
Squirrels cannot climb smooth copper pipe and it is amusing to watch
them try.


That is interesting Martin as our squirrels learned that if they took
a run and a jump and did not pause in their climbing they could manage
all the way to the top of our copper pipe support without too much
difficulty. It could be that as the pipe is 22mm there is sufficient
extra surface area to cling to. If they do pause they slide quite
gracefully back to ground level.

After trying greasing the pole for a while I fixed a (Gardman?) anti
squirrel dome a metre or so up the pipe which completely solved the
problem.

The reason I used 22mm pipe is that I fixed four rather nice black
iron hanging basket brackets at the top of the pipe at right angles to
one another and suspended four feeders from these. As our property is
somewhat exposed to the elements I reinforced the 22mm pipe with a
length of 18mm diameter dowel inside.

The trouble with the cage type feeders is that whilst they do exclude
the larger corvids such as magpies they do the same for Greater
Spotted Woodpeckers which we are more than happy to see.
--
rbel