Finally… Maybe… A Set-up that Keeps Squirrels Away from Our Bird Feeders
By: Daniel Berenson
Tags: Inventions, Parrots, Birds, Mental Health, Feeding Birds

Below you will see the bird feeders that my girlfriend Maureen and I built and installed on our back porch in 2017. We loved feeding the outdoor birds, but squirrels were a constant problem. Regular feeders weren’t tall enough. Squirrels can jump 5 to 7 feet (minimum) so they’d laugh at our pitiful attempts to thwart them. We thought these would do the trick. They were about 7' tall and they came equipped with hanging Slinkies, causing those guys to boing-boing up and down. So frustrating for them, we predicted. By the time we were through, we even had sun umbrellas to protect the birds from hawks that occasionally flew above.

Nice looking, huh? Professional even. I even wrote a Medium article touting their appearance and efficacy.

The article was accurate for about two to three months. Maybe longer. But who’s counting. Squirrels are nothing if not persistent and after our porch furniture was back in place, it didn’t take long for the varmints to use the chairs as launching pads. Or they’d climb through the middle of the Slinkies. Anything thin as those poles were no problem. They can grip onto anything. And look how they could just use those center posts as platforms to begin their journey to the Promised Land.

So I went to the baffle solution. Many of them, carefully placed so any squirrel was destined to never come close to the feeders. Another epic fail.

And yes, I thought of doctoring the food with red peppers (of all varieties). Birds are not sensitive to peppers but squirrels are. Or so we read. I kept upping the ante on peppers, going so far as to actually do damage to my tongue and throat as I tested my latest “Squirrel Squirmer.” But after watching through the window as various visitors wrapped themselves around the suet cages and gorged like it was Nero’s Rome circa A.D. 60, my interest in feeding the birds waned. Within a year, I conceded defeat. It wasn’t worth the time and effort. We would even provide bowls of cheap bird seed for the squirrels, hoping to divert to conquer, but that only encouraged them and soon word got out so far and wide that we had squirrels having turf wars over our porch’s plentiful pickin’s.

Definitely sad, if not pitiful.

Flash forward to 2019–2020 and Maureen and I were taking care of birds again. But not outdoors. It was these two guys: Charlie (the violet turquoise) and Yaya (the green), both Indian Ringneck parakeets. Anyone who has parrots can tell you they’re not a sideline. It’s like having an 18 month old baby 12 hours a day. (The other 12 they sleep.)

Our birds are free to fly around the much of the house most of the day. Did I say “house”? It’s now more like a giant bird cage, with many perches, towers, gyms, feeders, and boxes and boxes of toys. And yes, they talk. And screech. And bond. And delight. (But don’t go out and get a ringneck based on my say so. They’re famous for being one of the more difficult breeds to work with.)

But lately I’ve gotten nostalgic for our outdoor friends. So we’ve come up with yet another solution for the squirrel problem and so far, so good. This one is so logical, it really could work (unless squirrels drop down onto it from branches 10–20 feet above).

Behold and admire this new feeder’s logic and simplicity.

Birds love it. Squirrels? Not so much. So far.

It has the same base, but we’ve made if (hopefully) “squirrel-proof” by adding eight feet of 6" vent pipe (a 6' section plus a 2' section) and above that, a torpedo squirrel baffle (available online from Lowes). Two double shepherd’s hooks snake up the center, clamped together. There’s nowhere for the squirrels to get a grip. The pipe is wide, it’s smooth, it has no ledges nor edges. Resistant to the grippiest small animal claws, we believe. The thing is also over 8 feet high.

So wish us luck. This is probably our last shot at providing for Mother Nature’s only vertebrates who fly. But if it doesn’t work, we still have Charlie and Yaya.

And here’s one last amazing fact for you. Birds are directly descended from therapods, the dinosaur group that included the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Our little dinosaur is on my shoulder right now, chewing on my sweatshirt’s zipper, of course.

Thanks for visiting.

Sincerely,

Daniel Berenson

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About the author: Daniel Berenson is a retired teacher who now teaches ESOL(English for Speakers of Other Languages) to immigrants in the USA. He is in the middle of creating three different books that promise to take the interest level of ESOL books up a couple of notches. The rest of the time he hangs out with his girlfriend, the artist Maureen Dunlap (https://www.instagram.com/maureenjdunlap/), and his gangsta ringneck parrots Charlie Four Toes and Yaya. To see videos of Charlie’s and Yaya’s escapades, go to instagram.com/charlie.and.yaya