I think it might kind of depend on what kind of day lilies they are? Like if they are the common "ditch lilies", fulvas.. might not be a problem. I've seen chickens and various birds pick and prod around in those and the lilies stand up fine.. and even grow in so much critters stop poking around after a while. Or the birds finally win and the lilies just grow outside those areas.

If it's a nicer lily that you want to make sure you keep or a re-bloomer. , dig it up and move it. If you have space under where you want to keep the feeder up to keep the space clear and re-plant the lilies outside as a "border" to keep the look of the the area the same- that works.

And also.. I don't know where you are. But do you plan on keeping out suet year round? In my area once mid summer comes, suet is mostly moot. Birds aren't really interested again till the weather gets colder and they want/need the extra fats and such. If your lily is an early to mid-season bloomer, birds might be a problem. But if it's a later season bloomer when suet can be down.. take those couple days/weeks of enjoying your blooms and cleaning up the bed.. while also perhaps putting up less "messy" feeders like hummingbird feeders.

They're run of the mill orange daylilies but I would like them to do well. (ie not have the deer eat them...) They tend to bloom late June, early July. I'm near NYC.

I agree the birds don't need or perhaps won't be as interested in the suet in the summer. I'm just so pleased they're still eating there now, I'm hoping I can leave it up when it's hot out but I may not keep refilling it all the time. We'll see. I would prefer to be feeding them seed but when I started doing that, it attracted rats. We already have too many chipmunks. Mice and rats would not be welcome. (So far, they haven't been attracted to the suet, probably because I've only had it up in cold months.)

Well, in my experience, some of the suet always falls, so I hope the mice and rats aren't attracted to it. Let us know how it goes and what happened.

Yeah.. if there are already problems with rodents.. leaving out the suet can be a bad idea, regardless of how it may or may not impact the lilies.

We had suet on the ground all winter because the quail just loved it.

We had to discontinue it because of ground squirrels.

The suet droppings are spattering onto the daylily leaves That can't be good for them. I think I'll have to move the feeder or stop feeding them during these warm months. (I might hang it where it was all winter but I'm asking for ants inside the house if I do that as the outside of it will get suet on it too.)