Friend or fiend?
We are very fortunate that our park is alive with wildlife, there’s a variety of bird life in the water and woodland. We like to help our feathered friends when the weather gets a bit chillier by putting up a few feeding stations, and this year is no exception. However, the presence of our bird feeders often gets unwanted attention from certain furry friends…
The Park is the perfect squirrel playground, and our rodent residents are quite unphased by humans! They join people for their picnics (invited or otherwise!) and show off with their charmingly cute antics. But in reality these playful, plump critters are shrewd scavengers…
Eating EVERYTHING they find!
So far this Autumn not only have the Rowntree Park squirrel squad been pinching the bird food, but they’ve actually been eating the bird feeders too! We’ve had to have our wits about us and launch counter attacks to preserve the bird food to take us through the Winter. Squirrel proof bird feeding stations can be expensive, so we’ve gone with a DIY approach for now and it’s a really easy and economical way to protect your feeders.
Stop the squirrels!
It’s a hack that is quite common on the internet in the eternal squirrel wars. Simply drill a hole in an old mixing bowl and allow that to sit over the top of the bird feeder. It creates a protective umbrella allowing access for the birds underneath. Similar ideas use a large pop bottle that encase the bird feeder, but leaves a gap for the birds to still access food at the bottom. We’ve tried to place our hanging feeding stations away from over hanging branches to avoid sneaky sideways squirrel raids and we have also added grease to the poles of the bird stations that are on stakes in the ground.
However, with all this said, we know that as soon as squirrel bellies begin to rumble the sneaky squirrels will be scheduling a strategy convention to devise new tactics to get their paws on that bird food.
If you have any top tips or want to help create squirrel proof bird feeding stations, we’d love to hear from you!
Drop us a line at hello@rowntreepark.org.uk and we will put you in touch with Vikki.
