Bird Feeder Wars - episodes 3 & 4

So, I'm obsessed with my bird feeders. They have provided me with untold stoner hours of sitting zoning out looking out the windows. I recently shattered the glass panel on this feeder because I was throwing rocks (badly) at a squirrel that would not leave. Bastard.

At first this spring, I thought the couple of chipmunks and red squirrels that would come to eat were cute and a part of my garden ecosystem. Well that may be true (the jury's still out on that one), they are pigs. They sit at the feeder for hours, filling their cheeks, running away and then coming back 30 seconds later for more. While they're there, they scream and frighten all the birds away.

I didn't have it in me to load up the red Rider BB gun and get to blasting. So I started out using sections of old stovepipe. This didn't work. They chipmunks would burrow under the rim and then scamper up the pole, the squirrels would just leap right up over it onto the pole.

Now we come to episode 3 (sorry no pics on this one). I read that you can 'spice' up your birdseed as birds can't sense spicy tastes and all mammals do. I coated a big batch in cheap Chinese chili oil. It was a gross process. It did seem to work however, and after 2 days I removed the stovepipes and the chipmunks seem to have left. Yay! Until the next time I did my next batch I guess I didn't use enough oil because all the varmits came back. Even more than before! Arrgh. I tried a few more batches with varying results. But it was a pain to mix the stuff up every time.

At this point I thought about abandoning the birds altogether, we have been going through a 20-pound bag of sunflower seeds every 3-4 days and it was starting to cost too much. But the birds that have been showing up have been awesome! We've been getting large development teams (that's what they're called btw) of House Finches recently. They're so cool, they eat their weight in mosquitos every day! . Also we have a family of four Hairy Woodpeckers that eat exclusively at our backyard feeder. I needed to keep feeding all these guys.

I looked for new squirrel proof feeders and feeder 'baffles' at the great Lee Valley Tools site, and all the shit was so expensive! Fuck that, I'll go the cheap hillbilly route and build my own.

Ta-fucking-Da! I took a flimsy pot that some plants came from the store in, cut a small slit in them and threaded them over the feeder poles. And you know what? They have worked like magic! I filled all the feeders and after 2 weeks, they still are half full with seed. Not a single beast has been able to make it by its defenses. It's not the prettiest, but it works like the bomb. All the squirrels and chipmunks have moved on. Suddenly there are none. Hooray!