Amber is an avid bird lover who has owned several Zebra Finches over the years. When I first met her, she owned seven of them. This has rubbed off on me. We currently own two Zebra Finches named Puff and Stuff:
They are an endless source of entertainment and intrigue. Every time I think I’ve seen all their behavioral quirks, they do something else that’s strange or funny that I’ve never seen before. Like falling asleep in awkward positions on top of a swing. Or pulling paper towels up from below their cage lining to make a nest with it. Or doing cannon balls into their bath and soaking the table cloth.
One of those nauseating couple things we do is almost anytime we see an inexpensive bird trinket in a store there’s at least a 50 percent chance that we’ll buy it. So far, we have:
- a kitchen chicken
- a kitchen owl
- three living room chicks
- a bedroom hummingbird (Jen gave us this one)
We also have several paintings on the wall with birds on them. I’m probably forgetting a few things, but you get the point.
It was only a matter of time before we installed a bird feeder on our balcony. So we did a week or two ago. I mounted it on a light fixture built into the wall outside, dangling it from one of those things that hippies use when they go rock climbing. It sat there full of seed for a while seemingly without consequence. We figured that it would take the birds some time to find it, since we’re in the part of the building that faces away from most of the greenery.
One day I looked outside and all the sudden maybe one-eighth of the seed was gone. Those birds sure were hungry, right? Right?
Not long after, I looked outside again and saw a squirrel sitting on our window sill like he owned the joint. And the seed was all over our balcony while his friend nosed around eating it. I banged on the window, which convinced the little buggers to piss off for the moment, but I knew they’d be back.
The feeder we bought was advertised as squirrel proof. It has a mechanism where if something heavy enough pulls on it, the holes used for feeding are covered up. Birds are too light to trigger this mechanism, but supposedly squirrels aren’t.
After some trial and error, we figured out that it didn’t matter what weight sensitivity setting we had the feeder on. The squirrels managed to get around the mechanism by propping themselves up on the wall and shaking the seed out onto the ground. Clever squirrels, very clever indeed.
While we tried to figure out our next step, we left the seed out on the balcony and brought the feeder inside. Several birds started coming by as well as the squirrels, and sometimes the asshole squirrels would chase them away.
Last night, I mounted the feeder so it hangs off the rail. My theory was that the risk of certain death from a fall of a couple of stories combined with an inability to spill seed onto the balcony where it’d be easy to collect would serve as a deterrent. Like so:
And I was kind of right for a little while. This morning Amber said she saw them trying to figure out how to crack into it for several minutes, but they eventually went away empty-handed. I went to work hoping we’d seen the last of them, but not quite believing it. I was right to be apprehensive:
As you can see, the squirrels managed to chew through the plastic on the bottom of the feed holes, making the openings just large enough to poke their stupid little muzzles through as they hung upside down on the feeder, risking a two story fall in the process. Amber actually saw one of them do it.
So what now?
I would be perfectly happy to sit on the balcony with a BB gun and pick them off, but Amber (for now at least) doesn’t approve of that idea.
And at least they didn’t get as much seed as they were getting by tipping the feeder over. This has slowed them down quite a bit. And the birds haven’t been scared away yet:
We are looking for other ways to deter the squirrels. To be continued…
