When folks buy a bird feeder that the maker advertises as squirrel-proof, even the poorer designs may thwart the rodents at first. If squirrels cannot get seeds but hang around anyway, an experienced, perspicacious customer will suspect the company’s claim is untrue. These rodents sense a chink in the armor, spurring them to continue the attack, but if they leave without returning, they have decided that the humans have beaten them – for a while anyway. That’s my theory.

Here’s a quick history of a current bird-feeding station at my home:

When Jolie, my intrepid companion, and I moved here 13 years ago, gray squirrels climbed a tall pole to reach a bird-feeding platform on top, where we put black oil sunflower seeds and suet. Birders may know how this goes – squirrels eating expensive seeds as fast as we put them out.

To stop these critters from ascending the pole, I nailed sheet metal around it, so I figured that was that – goodbye, Mr. Bushy-tails – but the tenacious thieves started jumping onto the feeder platform from branches on a magnolia tree growing on one side or from a shrub on the other side. I cut key tree limbs and shrub branches, which worked for a week or two.

The squirrels hung around, studying the feeder, which influenced me to think my trimming solution had a weakness. A squirrel’s brain may weigh 7 to 8 grams compared to a human’s at 1,300 to 1,400 grams, but they figured out that they could leap directly from high magnolia limbs and land on the pole below the platform.

A large deck complicated logistics. I couldn’t move the feeder away from the tree, which put the platform closer to the shrub, so our new defense plan resembled a congressional solution – spend money and fail.

Jolie bought a feeder with a wide-diameter, shield-like bowl on top that curved outward and downward, and covered a narrow, seed-holding cylinder, seed ports and feeding perches. Squirrels would jump onto the wide bowl and slide off. I smiled widely.

Then squirrels started leaping onto the bowl to slide off deliberately, and during the fall the clever little guys would reach out their paws and try to catch the perches next to the feeding ports. They couldn’t reach far enough to grab anything, though, so the birdfeeder engineers had designed it so squirrels couldn’t pull off that acrobatic stunt. Yes, the bird feeder thwarted squirrels from filching seeds.

However, that bird feeder had a flaw, a plastic bowl instead of metal, so the squirrels figured out an unbelievable solution. They gnawed at the center top of the shield next to the fastener where a chain held it suspended, and they chewed the hole outwardly until it was a large enough diameter to slide down the bird feeder tube – party time for foraging squirrels.

Then we came up with a win that lasted a decade. At L.L.Bean we bought one of those forest-green, metal bird feeders that the company had sold for decades. It resembled a forest-green lean-to, and to get seeds, birds perched on a platform to reach the goodies through feeding ports. Birds were too light to close the ports, but squirrels were heavy enough to shut the openings every time they hopped aboard. (Bean now calls this model a Double-sided Absolute II Bird Feeder, a little different from my old one but the same principle.)

I said it was a metal feeder, though. After a decade, water began rusting the little brackets that held the perching platform, so the ingenious squirrels began jumping on it from the magnolia, eventually breaking the perch. The feeding ports no longer closed.

I opted for buying another metal feeder from Bean, but Jolie purchased a red metal feeder from Wal-Mart that had aesthetics going for it. After all, red and green are complimentary colors, so the feeder looked grand, hanging in our magnolia next to the lush, tropic-like leaves. The squirrels no longer visit the feeder – a good sign for sure.

Gray squirrel populations have increased big time since I was a kid, but we don’t have hunters after them in the Oct. 1-to-Dec. 31 season. I’d like to see IFW promote this small-game animal and lengthen the squirrel season to a Sept. 15 or even Sept. 1 opener. We can already hunt Canada geese, rails and snipe on Sept. 1, a precedent, so let’s add gray squirrels and hope bird-feeder robbers decrease in number.

In my preteens and early teens, I enjoyed hunting squirrels and particularly relished eating them in stews or fricassees, but I’d be reluctant to eat squirrels that routinely fed on bird seeds because of a worry about “harmless” pesticides and herbicides in commercial gardens grown for bird feed. For sure, I’d stick to harvesting squirrels far from homes.

It looks as if the red feeder works, but I’ll keep you posted and hope for the best.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes, a writer, editor and photographer, may be reached at

KAllyn800@yahoo.com

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