Henry Rifle Forums

Looking at putting up a bird feeder around my deck area and ideas to make it squirrel proof have been spinning thru my head.
One idea is to have the feeder mounted on top of pole with a spoked wheel located mid way up the pole under the feeder. The wheel would be motorized spinning at a moderate speed with some way to keep vibration and noise down as not to scare the birds off. Now the squirrel that decides to come up from bottom and take his chances with the wheel of bad fortune would be interesting!
I have enough stuff laying around to build one.

Hang a slinky down and around the pole.

You don't need to go to that extreme and, yes, a spinning wheel is going to spook some birds. Assuming you have everything else set up, correctly, a standard squirrel baffle that mounts on the pole does a good job. They're cheap, but you can still make your own if you want.

Go to squirrel-free.com and look at the Wild Bills bird feeders. I bought their Feeding Frenzy model and pole mounted it with a a squirrel baffle installed on the pole. They are made in the USA.
I don’t feed my birds until November because they should find food naturally until late fall.

It's a difficult challenge to deter those determined rodents, ( IMO ). I've even suspended feeders on very thin stainless steel wire that there's no way they can hold onto. That is when I realized how high those things can jump, and how little the fall back to Earth affects them. Annoying/destructive as they are, they're incredibly resilient.
When they get out of control...I just shoot them....easier to do that than cut down the Oak trees they're breeding in.

fortyshooter wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 12, 2023 7:39 pm

Looking at putting up a bird feeder around my deck area and ideas to make it squirrel proof have been spinning thru my head.
One idea is to have the feeder mounted on top of pole with a spoked wheel located mid way up the pole under the feeder. The wheel would be motorized spinning at a moderate speed with some way to keep vibration and noise down as not to scare the birds off. Now the squirrel that decides to come up from bottom and take his chances with the wheel of bad fortune would be interesting!
I have enough stuff laying around to build one.

We bought 2 of these https://bromebirdcare.com/squirrelbusterclassic/
They have an outside spring loaded cage. The weight of a squirrel pulls the cage down over the feeding ports. It's an idea to try for making your own.

They are pesty little guys. We have a feeder where when they step on the bar, the feeder closes. But they can eventually figure out how to work around that. We then bought a Baffle and that works, if you put the whole works high enough. Too low and they can jump on it. Right now, I can just about re-load it at the height it is at. But I'm going to try to lower it a few inches. The slinky idea sounds good. I may try that some time.

I hang mine from tree branches using coat hanger wire. It's amazing how these demonic little animals can shinny down a thin wire to the goodies. There is one in particular that is extremely persistent. She is pregnant again, and I am sure she isn't married. I've had decent luck with baffles on the wires. The best seems to be a large plastic bowl with a hole drilled in the middle secured to the wire with the bowl upside down.

They are becoming bolder as the days go by. I was out in the yard talking on my cell and one was just a few yards away looking at me. Last year I never had issues with them on the suet block. This spring they figured out how to get to it, and how to get access to it through the little cage they are in. I had to put a baffle on the wire for the suet just this week.

We get the hot pepper suet blocks. The squirrels won't touch it, but the birds love it.

Our suet feeder holds double blocks in a square wire cage inside a bigger outside circular cage. Squirrels can't reach the suet. Only loss we've had was to a racoon. Took the whole cage off into the brush somewhere.

I used stove pipe on my feeder pole. Keeps the little buggers from climbing the pole and as long as it’s located away from trees it seems to work well. The squirrels can leap an amazing distance from tree to tree. We quit on the feeders as the birds would drop a lot of seed onto the ground which attracted the damn turkeys. I tried putting a spiked mat under the feeders but the turkeys still left a mess.

As I was just now taking these pics I could hear from inside one of the houses some tapping noise. Wonder if some nest building is going on.

Thanks for all the ideas!

My wife had a "pet" squirrel when she was a child, so she has warm fuzzy feelings towards the little buggers. I don't really like them, although with the right breading they're not bad. My antipathy towards them has increased since I started trying to feed the birds. If I lived in the country we wouldn't have a squirrel problem, other than what side to serve with them. That and where I was going to sleep tonight.

I think it was Wednesday, I was finally able to buy some .410 squirrel food. 2 1/2" #6.

Our bird feeder hangs about 4’ off the ground on a pole shaped like a Shepherd’s Hook. I grease the pole with cooking spray.

I did the same thing, only I greased it with Nair. It didn't keep them from getting to the feeder, but at least I knew which ones had been on the feeder.

clovishound wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 19, 2023 9:05 am

I did the same thing, only I greased it with Nair. It didn't keep them from getting to the feeder, but at least I knew which ones had been on the feeder.

Mr. Neutron wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 19, 2023 1:33 am

Our bird feeder hangs about 4’ off the ground on a pole shaped like a Shepherd’s Hook. I grease the pole with cooking spray.

My wife has a couple of those hooks with Hummingbird feeders on them. The ants like to climb the pole to get to the sugar water so she puts vasoline on it and they get stuck in it.

clovishound wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 19, 2023 9:05 am

I did the same thing, only I greased it with Nair. It didn't keep them from getting to the feeder, but at least I knew which ones had been on the feeder.

There's the priority for who gets shot first.

If I lived where I could shoot from back door, my philosophy would likely be: "Shoot them all and let the cook sort them out."