Stop Squirrels From Stealing Your Bird Seeds

Rich Edie:

Hi, Rich Edie with Wild Birds Unlimited on Memorial and in Cyprus.

Are squirrels giving you a real problem in the backyard? Well, most people start with a pole system just like this, where you’ve got your feeders, you’re enjoying your birds, and then all of a sudden you’ve noticed a squirrel has zipped right up the pull and gotten on your feeders and is eating all your bird food.

Well, the way to solve that when you have a pole system like this is to install a baffle. Now for a baffle, did you know that squirrels can jump 10 feet horizontally and 5 feet vertically? So in order for a baffle to be effective, you’ve got to maintain your system at least 10 feet away from a place where a squirrel can jump like a tree or a fence or a table.

Another way to solve squirrel problems if a baffle is not going to be effective for you is to incorporate hot pepper bird food into your feeding. What is hot pepper bird food? Well, it’s exactly that. It’s coated in a hot pepper chili oil. Did you know that squirrels have capsaicin receptors just like we do? They actually smell and taste the heat of the peppers, and they don’t particularly like it.

So you can choose from a wide variety of products that we have. We have our Fiery Feast, which is our popular no-mess blend that’s coated in hot pepper oil. We’ve got just straight Sunflower Chips, beauty of these is both of these give you a no-mess way of feeding the birds and keeping the squirrels out of your feeder. We have our popular seed cylinders in either a

No-Mess or a Cranberry. These are very hot. What’s nice about a cylinder is they last up to a couple of weeks and you don’t have to go out and fill your feeder every day. And then you can incorporate fat into the bird’s diet by incorporating Jim’s Birdacious Bark Butter Bits. All of these are hot pepper foods and all of these the squirrels will not particularly like them at all.

Okay, so we’ve talked about baffles and we’ve talked about hot pepper foods. So if the baffle isn’t going to work for you and you don’t necessarily want to use hot pepper bird foods in your backyard, then a great way is to incorporate a squirrel resistant feeder, like our eliminator feeder. You notice that the weight of the squirrel will close off the ports to the food. Now, that doesn’t mean that the squirrel isn’t going to get on there and try and get into the food, but it does keep them from getting at the food and emptying your feeder.

So squirrel resistant feeders are a great way. You can feed any kind of classic blends that you want are no-mess blends, choice blends, you can use any food that you want when you incorporate a squirrel resistant feeder like this. So we’ve given you some choices, the baffle, the hot pepper bird foods, or a squirrel resistant feeder in your backyard. Don’t let the squirrels ruin your fun. Enjoy their playfulness, but also you can keep them from getting in and eating all your bird food.