Backyard bird feeders can encounter food thieves
We call it “bird feeding,” but in reality other wildlife besides birds readily gorge on the food we provide specifically for birds.
Squirrels come quickly to mind. Which squirrels raid your bird feeders depends on where you live. Here in the city fox squirrels — a tree-dwelling species — are the only predictable squirrel species to raid feeders meant for birds.
Close to the foothills and into the foothills adds other squirrel species including two chipmunks, two ground-squirrels and, if far enough into ponderosa pine treelands, possibly the common chickaree.
Other bird feeder intruders include mice, rats, skunks and raccoons. As with squirrels, different species of mice will eat at bird feeders. The house mouse is the most commonly seen at bird feeders, but deer mice can be a common raider though more cautious so less frequently seen.
Striped skunks on the plains and western spotted skunks in the foothills and lower mountains generally ignore standard seed-based bird food. They and raccoons much prefer foods such as suet, bread scraps and various fruits.
Insects represent another discrete category of mostly unwelcomed visitors to bird feeders. In our area the two insects most routinely encountered at bird feeders are earwigs and grain moths. And here the subject presents a vital side story.
Where and how you store food meant for birds can either encourage or discourage wildlife whether insect or mammal. Open bags sitting on the garage floor or on the patio or in the garden shed are basically invitations to earwigs, grain moths and mice. Closing the bags by folding the open tops and clipping them snugly shut can exclude earwigs and grain moths, but house mice and brown rats sooner or later discover they can chew through the bag and gorge on the food you don’t want them to have.
I’ve tried using various makes and models of plastic containers as a way to store bird food, but they don’t suit my need. Small containers seal tightly, but their small size means I need lots of them. Large containers hold more seeds, but they don’t seal well and earwigs and grain moths can still get in them. And those tiny moths find their ways into the house, especially the kitchen.
After decades of feeding wild birds, battling food-thief wildlife and experimenting with various ways to store the food, I am back to my original way of protecting the bird food.
I store it in the oldfashioned metal garbage cans.
The lids seat tightly so neither earwig nor grain moth can crawl between lid and can. The tight fit also means they protect the stored food from getting wet in rain or snow, which means I can keep them outside rather than in the house or garage. And they are available in various sizes to accommodate differently sized food bags. A standard metal garbage can holds two 40-pound bags of sunflower seeds still in their shells.
Being made of metal and with tight-fitting lids, the old-fashioned metal cans prevent every species of mouse, rat and skunk and even raccoons from accessing stored food. That alone can discourage them enough to reduce the frequency of their “visits.”
Storing food is one thing, but once the food is out there keeping the invaders at bay is a much bigger challenge. I’ll address that challenge next time.