Hamwild said:I buy a baffle for my shepherd's hook to prevent squirrels from helping themselves.
I like hopper feeders personally.
Lastly, black oil sunflower seems to be the best seed for me.
I also feed safflower, suet, and mixed seed (in a ground feeder tray). Oh yeah, and some peanuts for the furry ones (squirrels).
I love this feeder. It's cheap (like $10) and easy to clean. I had a $20 metal feeder and I found it hard to clean.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Garde...
I use it for my blackoil.
I use this one for my safflower:
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Stoke...
Also cheap ($7 I think) and easy to clean.
This says four ports, but it only holds two cakes. I love how it has two doors that open outward. Some suet feeders have you drop them in, which I found annoying.
https://www.acehardware.com/de...
Lastly, I use this suet. I've tried several flavors, brands, etc and my woodpeckers loooove this stuff. And, I've found it's not all that greasy compared to others. A major plus!
https://www.tractorsupply.com/...
Hamwild said:The blackoil attracts most birds (cardinals, finches, titmice, chickadees) whereas the suet attracts woodpeckers (we get red bellied and downy here). Some of the chickadees and cardinals like it too.
The safflower is kind of a bonus, but if I were to only feed one seed, it would be the blackoil. Safflower is more expensive than blackoil, so I don't see it as a "need" for the birds.
The blackoil is cheaper than other seeds and despite reading that they like millet, I found they'd push it out to the ground when mixed with blackoil and wouldn't touch it on its own. I use that mixed stuff (I can get a cheap bag of mixed seed, 20 lb for $8 at Lowes) for the ground feeding birds like doves (and the squirrels eat it).
I'm not sure about hanging from a tree. Squirrels can jump pretty far and height wise. Hopefully someone else with tree hanging can chime in and give you some pointers. But, I'd imagine you'd need a baffle that can be hung from the tree at the very least.
If you'd like a picture of my setup, I can show you how I have set mine up. It's getting dark here though, so it'll have to be tomorrow.
Hamwild said:I think it can take up to a couple weeks tbh! It took a long time to see anyone on the suet feeder.
I had to take our feeders down for a few days after we had a hawk attack and even though they've been up for over two years, it took a few days for everyone to come back once I put them back up.
But, I think when I first put them up, it took a good week or so to see a bird. The squirrels were destroying the feeder before thebirds saw it, lol.
Hamwild said:It will just take some time. I'd say, leave them up for a few months if you have to (with winter coming, they will be looking for food). But, they should show up eventually.
I think our attack was a freak accident (we had two juvenille doves that weren't as fearful as they should have been). Some hawks or other birds of prey do eat birds, but in the couple years I've been feeding, this has only happened once. We have a kite, three types of hawks, and an owl pair. So, with those odds, I think that was a rare occurrence. We've never lost a squirrel either.
Hamwild said:I had some milo trying to grow once. And one sunflower until someone broke it. The squirrels just got some leftover suet because there wasn't much left in the feeder.
We had a red shouldered hawk land on our fence once. I think it was just trying to stay out of the rain.
Hamwild said:Same here! We have a wooded lot behind our house so we've had a deer in the woods, a possum crawl into the yard and pass away (we also live near a busy road, so my Dad thinks he may have been hit by a car ) and a raccoon that was helping itself to my suet (actually broke my old suet feeder ).
Oh wow! No eagles here at least. We have turkeys, but none live near us from what I can tell.
Not the usuals. I've seen pictures of Cardinals and Chickadees sitting on snowy feeders.
Hamwild said:
I'm not sure! We have a privacy fence, so no deer and so far no rabbits.
Also, once the squirrels stick around longer, you may notice they are more plump.