On 09/06/2014 12:42, Gazz wrote:

"Gordon H" wrote in message
...
On 05/06/2014 12:40, tony sayer wrote:
In article , d ryan
scribeth thus
We have been feeding Robins with finely chopped peanuts (salt washed
off)
and porridge oats. The mice have found it and brazenly come out in
day time
to eat it.

To deter the mice we cut out the sides of a one pint plastic milk
carton,
and fixed it to a bamboo garden cane about one metre high, but this
morning
found what look like mice droppings in the new arrangement.

Can mice climb a single vertical garden bamboo cane only about four
millimeters in diameter? Or might these be Robin droppings?

I bet they can..


Would there be a simple way to stop mice climbing up a bamboo stick?



I found one suitably cremated in our boiler with a balanced flue. Only
way mousey could have got in there was straight up a brick wall and thru
the flue all some ten feet above ground level!...

OK, so explain how a frog managed to get into my toilet bowl at 1st
floor level.
It happened many years ago, and I never did suss it out.
:-)

You didn't chew it properly on the way down ?

Best answer yet, but no cigar. :-)

--
Gordon H

Remove Invalid to reply

Couldn't agree more. Mammals can't handle hot chilli
powder, but birds
don't have those receptors. I buy a 1 kg bag of Extra Hot
chilli powder from the Asian grocer from time to time, and
add it by the Tbsp to my porridge oats mixed with melted
lard or dripping and sunflower seeds, and put it in the bird
table. It has fixed the problem. We saw the squirrel come
up for his snack and then watched from the window as he
tried to rub the chilli from his eyes and nose.

Also, we have pigeon problems, they eat everything. So on
our little bird table on a pole I put some green garden wire
a couple of times top to bottom and side to side on each
side of the bird table, held together with drawing pins.
The pigeons can no longer get into the bird table, and fall
off the roof (har-har) but it doesn't deter the smaller
birds.

wrote in message
...
If you add chilli powder they will give up coming. Birds
can't taste it but mammals can. I gave up trying to stop
squirrels climbing my feeders but have had no problem since
adding chilli.

Interestingly, I had some fat balls out all winter that were
hardly touched: some of the grain in them even germinated. I
swapped them for new ones recently and all the newly fledged
tits are mad keen on them. It seems that the adults are
reluctant to try anything new. Similarly the niger seed I
put out front when I noticed some finches nesting in our
eaves: not touched for weeks but abruptly emptied when the
little ones came out of the nest.

On Sun, 15 Jun 2014 21:38:14 +0100, "someone"
wrote:

Couldn't agree more. Mammals can't handle hot chilli
powder, but birds
don't have those receptors.

After I read the advice about using chilly to keep squirrels off my
bird feeders I bought a packet of cayenne pepper. It was very hot and
so I thought it would do the trick. It has made no difference at all
as the squirrels keep coming.

OTOH it does deter some birds. Nuthatches don't like chilli powder as
it gets in their eyes when they are feeding up-side-down.

Steve

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