Someone's Been Eating at MY Birdfeeder-- and he's STILL here!
Comments (25)
suegrew
16 years agocountrynest
16 years agoRelated Discussions
whose been eating my orchids?
Comments (7)and slugs...I'm still killing them in the garden. Look for slime trails. Also, do you have cats? I have also heard rodents munch on orchids, but I don't know how or what... Actually a picture is worth a thousand words as most of the munchers leave characteristic chomp types....I'm afraid that "the tips look chewed" isn't as descriptive we might like to help you figure out what is what.......See MoreThis ? has been in my mind for years and still is! Pls help.
Comments (32)Use this winter to read up on hardy palms. Lots of information on this site and others. Plan on starting with an affordable needle palm as they are the cold hardiest. Just realize in your zone that any palm will have to be winter protected indefinitely. Also this winter, study you garden spaces and try to locate the best micro climate. Usually the south facing wall is optimal. Will other plants need to be moved? Will the soil need to be improved? Better drainage? You can get started on that stuff before planting season. While some people caution against buying blue pot palms at Home Depot or Lowes, I've had great success with them, with few exceptions. I'm also in a much milder coastal location, so I have a slight advantage on the basic cold hardy palms. Just realize they are notoriously less hardy the first year or two. The real advantage is price. You can afford to lose a $40 palm, but not a $400 one. Plus get one that is large enough to sustain winters (with protection), but manageable enough to figure out how to protect it. You might do some research as to where needle palms are being sold next spring. After a successful first palm, you can think about more needles or experimenting with the next step on the hardy palm scale (sabal minors/dwarf palmetto). Again, Jim Hardy does amazing things with winter life support in his Iowa location....See MoreSomething or SomeONE is eating my tomatoes
Comments (17)It could be almost anything. Squirrels, turtles(if the fruit is close to the ground), rats, birds(if they're thirsty), dogs(they don't usually leave anything behind), tomato horn worms(they can eat a surprising amount for their size) and a bunch of other wild critters have been known to dine on tomatoes. You could try and pick up a cheap IR game camera. So long as it isn't the horn worms it should tell you what's been nibbling on your maters. Anything that goes after my tomatoes gets more than a water hose aimed at it....See MoreSomeone's been planting in my space, and I need the serenity prayer!
Comments (45)Pink, I hope your new plot works out well. You are generous. House sparrows: you might already know this, but you can put two boxes on a pole, back to back. That way row different species can nest on the sa,e pole duplex — bluebirds with tree swallows, for example. I would gulp and destroy the house sparrows. Ugly work, but there are fairly quick ways to dispatch them. Toss their bodies into the woods and something like an opossum or fox will have them for dinner. The house sparrows are destructive pests. The nest early, they not only attack nestlings, I’ve seen the lock onto a tree swallow and put it to the ground pecking at it fiercely. There are traps that can trap live house sparrows. Of course you must keep an eye on any trap so that no bird sufferers and you can release any desirable bird. Do not let the caught house sparrows free. They will just keep breeding, snack at fast food joints and destroy other desirable birds and nestlings. A person at a wildlife place showed me how to quickly and relatively humanely dispatch one of these destructive birds. He also was careful that I was not an over the top animal rights activist. I like animals, let snakes, spiders, wasps and bees be, but I do slap black flies and mosquitoes and don’t have pangs of guilt when destroying a deer tick or horse fly. You could find some flat stones and put your name on them in your new spot. Lugging water is a drag. A seventh generation dairy farmer I rented from had a garden 1/8 mile from her spigot. I was given a plot. She cautioned me not to water. Just leave the plants alone but for weeding and okay to sort of mulch w loosened loam. Keep it weeded. She said that then, without watering, the plants roots will grow deeper and unless there is a severe drought, the plant will be fine. I did this. Even my basil was lush, full and green. This was in western Massachusetts and the summers were quite hot. Have fun!...See Moremanature
16 years agomanature
16 years agofloridajane
16 years agosolstice98
16 years agomanature
16 years agoanitaathome
16 years agomanature
16 years agomaureen155
16 years agoYou need one of these. I have extras.
Seriously, though, I feed birds at three different feeders. One is hung from a long chain in the tree. Only the birds and flying squirrels find it. The others are on posts that have baffles. It's fun to watch the raccoons try to get up there. The squirrels try but seldom succeed and the rats never get past the baffles.
Maureen
manature
16 years agowildworldwoman
16 years agotannatonk23_fl_z9a
16 years agomanature
16 years agoBetsy, I would of course take steps if I started seeing an infestation like you are talking about. That would be very unpleasant. I would take down the feeders for a few weeks and put out traps, etc, until I got things slowed down. Then I'd try again.
Wildworldwoman, you sound like my kinda gal! Welcome to the forum, and I hope you will post more often now that you have taken the first step. You are EXACTLY right. And you are so lucky to live where you can enjoy that many species of owls. I just love screechies and barred owls...their calls make my summer nights complete! But I have NEVER seen a barn owl in the wild!! Honestly! I'd love to, as I think they are so mysterious looking and beautiful.
Thanks for sharing your 3am adventures with us. I tend to stay up quite late at night, too, and am sometimes rewarded with night callers of various sorts. Still waiting for my first Chuck-will's-widow of this season. The whippoorwills are just about gone, and the chucks should start calling soon. (Whippoorwills winter down here, but don't call during those months. If you are lucky, you might hear them calling as they start to migrate north for the summer.)
Jane, do let us know how your baffles are working. One thing...you may need to fine tune them a bit. When we first put ours up, they weren't quite "tippy" enough, and the squirrles could grab the edge of them and leap to the feeders. Mark adjusted them slightly with a large, floppy washer underneath, and now they wobble all over the place. Also, try to be sure your feeders don't hang down low, or way out beyond the baffle. Here is a picture of one of mine. Notice that the food stays almost directly over the baffle. (That's one of my lovely white-winged doves on it.)
Marcia
floridajane
16 years agoManature, that picture is great! Thanks for the visual. I didn't realize that the baffle should be wobbly-- I'll look into that for sure!
In any case, the rats were definitely baffled by my baffle last night! We stood watch and not a soul made it to the feeder. Yea!!!
This has been such an informative thread! Thanks for sharing all your tips and tricks, everyone!
Just in case you're all wondering, here's our household rat catcher hard at work (and you wonder why we have a problem!)
manature
16 years agoYour household rat catcher looks a lot like one of mine. But I really can't fault mine, since I would DIE if one of them got outside!
As for the baffles, I think they would probably work fine on rats even without the wobble, but to keep squirrels off, they need to "collapse" when the squirrel tries to hold on. If they are not wobbly, I've seen squirrels walk right up them. BUT before you go messing with yours, just keep observing. No need to fix it if it ain't broke, if you know what I mean. If your squirrels are baffled by it, then great! But do keep an eye out. I used a slinky on a pole for months and finally a squirrel figured out how to climb up it. Once he learned, all the rest of them figured it out, too.
In the meantime, enjoy thwarting those rats! Let 'em look for sustenance elsewhere, I say! Glad it might have solved the problem for you.
Marcia
wildworldwoman
16 years agomanature
16 years agosolstice98
16 years agoHere's my primary rodent control (see photo below). If a rat or mouse dares to venture onto The Big Petunia's favorite quilt they'll be sorry! She's been known to roll over unexpectedly (would that be capsize?) and could smother an unsuspecting intruder.
Kate
GrayC, poised for quick action! (aka The Big Petunia)
manature
16 years agokjpalmisciano
8 years agowisconsitom
8 years ago
sultry_jasmine_nights (Florida-9a-ish)
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoWe had a problem with rats on our back screened in porch this winter. They chewed a hole in the screen door wood frame at the bottom so we put a metal strip there and then they chewed a hole in the floor grrr. I had to leave the door open so the cats could get in during the day. At night I have to shut the door though because possums and raccoon will come in and eat the koi from my patio pond! Anyhow, it did work. I guess the smell of cats were enough to keep the night rats out because they are gone now.
My #1 Mouser..she is mainly an indoor cat but she loves to get mice.
Snicker Pie giving herself a bath lol
~SJN
Elizabeth Childers
3 years ago
mboston_gw