They prefer apples in my yard. Also they like the hummer feeders.

Yeah...a fresh orange might help lol.

Grape jelly!! Try that!

I have the best luck combining the two. I put grape jelly in a hollowed out orange.

How about putting half a fresh orange out there?

I got my first Oriole feeder and Saturday our first pair appeared. They ignored the oranges and tried the grape jelly. They are sooooo timid. I hope they come back!! What is the best practice for when one exchanges the orange? I will try the apple too. Thanks for the tip josephene.

I think I tried grape jelly once, but no takers. I tried hard to find some that didn't have high fructose corn syrup in it and think I went with fruit-only stuff...which isn't cheap. I think (at least around here) you have to get their attention at the beginning of the season, or they find elsewhere to dine. They seem to like tulip trees......maybe because the blossoms are orange? I also realized that if you're going to have a jelly feeder, it should be covered, otherwise a rain could wipe it out. Hmmm....I might have to give apple a try. I try to change my oranges when they start getting mold on them........but I guess that means there aren't enough orioles hanging around.

Orioles here aren't thrilled with oranges or with grape jam. They love apricot preserves and peach preserves (I get cheap preserves at Ocean State Job Lot, but last year was a bad year for peaches so that's scarce). I like to give them something with pieces of fruit in it. I think last year they liked raspberry jam too. Today I tried mixing in some cherry preserves and the verdict isn't in yet.

One of my jelly feeders is covered and I'm going to get a cover for the other - it got washed out by the last rain.

Raccoons also love jelly feeders if they can reach them (I moved it this year).

Claire

Hey Claire.....it was nice of you to put that post/fence up there, so he/she could reach it. :)

catherinet: The post and fence was intended to hold back an enthusiastic rose - It never occurred to me that a raccoon could stand on it. I lived with it last year, letting the coon empty the dish and I refilled it each morning.

This year I put the jelly feeder on the other side of the hook and so far it's been untouched. Except this morning I looked out and the dish is on the ground. Could be crows bouncing on the hook, or maybe the coon has a portable step ladder....

Claire

Hi Claire........haha.......I was joking about you putting up a post/fence for the coon. :) I knew it was meant for something else. I put out suet in a metal feeder once and hung it on my clothes line pole and in the morning everything was completely gone. And long ago, I hung bars of soap on some pine trees to keep the deer away........and I'm sure it was the coons who took them all down and I couldn't find any of them again.

Those rascals! Right now I have a suet feeder on a pretty tall shepherd's hook. But the red squirrel just scampers up it with no problems! It can be a challenge trying to outwit some of these guys!

catherinet: I've had several suet cages disappear - sometimes I find them farther away as if the coon got tired of carrying it and just ate the suet there.

The jelly feeder was different. At first the dish disappeared, and I found one of them across the street, but the coon apparently learned that if it took the dish away across the street it would never refill. But if the coon dropped the empty dish under the feeder, I would put it back up and refill it. So every morning I'd find the empty dish neatly left under the feeder. I appreciated that and that's probably one of the reasons I was willing to share with the coon last year.

And then there was the time I wondered why my hummingbird feeder that hung on the deck railing was empty every morning.

I took the feeder off the deck and hung it on a shepherd's hook in the yard.

Claire

LOL.........those waskely wabbits! haha It's hard to get mad at wildlife who are just as hungry as the beings it's "meant" for. It sort of reminds me on the pond forum when someone came on and posted "I put in a nice little pond. Now how can I get rid of the frogs that came???" I told him....."Buddy, you're on the wrong forum." hahaha most of us on that forum get soooo excited when we can attract frogs. I'm like you, Claire, I just move things around to make it a little harder for the coons.......but they're pretty darned smart. I have little red squirrels who shimmy quite easily up my shepherd's hook to the suet cage. They get hungry too....

UGH!! I SEARCHED for grape jelly w/o corn syrup--found ONE brand..now you say apricot. I get a bird or two "looking" and not liking....no to apples/orange halves too. I know my dear neighbor before she died would not have spent much money or time searching for grape jelly. She had TONS of takers at her feeder. Back to the drawing board!!