ROFL! I remain impressed with the best hummingbird feeder EVER ones that we got. Does Bonnie want one to replace her "EVER EVER" feeder? Still figuring on a quick group order... So far we've got 3 red ones and one pink... should be able to get at least 20% off, and free shipping to Jan's.

Eric4home said:Charlie, if you have clover in your lawn the bunnies like that better. We have very little damage from bunnies in any of our beds, they are always seen in the lawn eating clover.

Clover I've got. Bunnies usually attack (in earnest) my dahlias and many vegetables (toms, peppers). I have to spray some stinky coyote urine (or something like that) on the young sprouts. Sometimes I put wire mesh over the young plants. Once established the plants do well.

Backyards frogs have given nice concerts last couple nights. It's funny how they will suddenly stop though, for no apparent reason.

We have baby bunnies, I'd guess 3-4 weeks old. It must be from a rather early litter. Maybe that warm spell in Feb. made a few of them amorous. Darth seems to like them, he gets excited and wags at them. Alfie on the other hand wants to give chase and jumps against the glass, which is verboten. I'm glad Darth is smart and does not think we are scolding him for his interest and trying to stop Alfie's aggression. It is rumored that Noah had to keep telling the rabbits, "Only two".

Well, here it is a few minutes after 6 AM and that dang male robin has been banging on the dinning room windows for about a half hour so far. This makes around a week that he has been attacking the windows every few seconds almost non-stop for entire days. You'd think he'd have starved to death by now, if not succumbed to concussion or other body damage.

Cripes! that's nuts. Still, males can be nuts about l'amour, n'est-ce pas?
I heard buzzing one day, and watched a male bumble or carpenter bee hovering around a pair of bees having a 'private conversation'. Every so often, the flyer would go in, and then there be a big buzzing bumbling battle , flying around a bit, then one would go back to the lady, this went on for minutes and many rounds of battle.. It's vignettes like these that make gardening or being out in nature extra special to me.

The male carpenter bees are big, noisy, any seemingly aggressive around people, though they are just curious. Males do not have stingers, so just sneer and deride them when they fly up to your face to check you out. Other folks around will think you are fearless.

greenthumb99 said:Well, here it is a few minutes after 6 AM and that dang male robin has been banging on the dinning room windows for about a half hour so far. This makes around a week that he has been attacking the windows every few seconds almost non-stop for entire days. You'd think he'd have starved to death by now, if not succumbed to concussion or other body damage.

At least while he's busy challenging your window, he's not passing his genes on to a new generation

Consider putting a small mirror at the robin's pecking spot offset from your window an inch. Bet you won't hear any noise after that.

It's panel of six 2' by 4' windows. If something isn't to his (dis)liking, he starts on another window. He flies up and attacks, drops down and repeats. No one window or position on window.

The poor cat was chased up a tree by a fox for the 3rd time!!! That was in the early evening (maybe around 6:30pm?) last Friday. Then at about 9pm, we saw baby foxes playing on our lawn when we went to close the back door. They didn't seem to be bothered when we shone the flashlight on them. One of them came all the way to the patio. That was when we first knew that the fox family was back! Again they are living under the shed.

The neighbor now keeps both cats inside the house. They should be safe now.

The baby foxes are still very small, about 10" - 12" long not counting the tail. There are 7 of them. They came out to play in the evening, chasing and wrestling each other only several yards away from the house. A great fun to watch.

The foxes last year were red foxes. The mama fox had a magnificent big tail. The fox mama this year doesn't look very red. I at first thought they were gray foxes, but the pups all have dark legs, dark ears, and white tips on the tail. The online photos of gray fox pups didn't show such physical characteristics. Only red foxes have these. Does anybody know how to better identify them?

Donner - you could bring the young foxes to the swap so people could re-home them for small rodent control.

I am not a regular participant in the Mid-Atlantic group, but I saw this heading and just had to post in hope of finding a solution to a critter problem.

I like to put out a suet cake in a cage-like suet holder for the birds. It hangs from a tree about five feet above the ground. There were no problems all winter, but starting in very early spring, a mystery critter would come and devour the entire suet cake in one night without opening the cage-like holder. It happens only at night, never during the day. It is not squirrels. They come during the day and take only small amounts, like the birds.

I need a strategy for protecting the suet from the mystery visitor at night. I would prefer not to take the suet feeder down each night because it is very greasy.

Any ideas would be welcome.

@greenthumb99 Their ma probably would fight me if I tried.

No more rodents here. I have not seen a chipmunk in 2 years. We used to have quite a few of them zipping around the backyard and eating under the bird feeder.

Carol, good to see you here. Please come more often.

Raccoons used to attack the suet packs I put out until we found a way to protect the feeder. Do you have raccoons around?

@greenthumb99
I have had the same problem with a male cardinal. I solved it by propping a book on the windowsill.

Hi Carol!

Great question, for which I don't have an answer. Seems like it would take something a very long time to nibble or lick a whole suet cake out of the holder. But then maybe a small raccoon, could take a lot of little chunks out between the cage bars, and maybe do it pretty quickly.

I hate handling those greasy suet cages.

If you can move it to a pole, people use a Slinky on the pole to block squirrels, so maybe that would work on your mystery critter too?

for David- I wonder if a light shining towards the windows would make enough inside light to make them not give him his reflection.

@sallyg
A pole with a slinky sounded like a good idea at first. However, I want to see the suet feeder from my kitchen window, and there are tree branches overhead. A smart critter could easily leap from a tree branch onto the feeder.

David, try yardenman's suggestion -- having a really clear reflection in an actual mirror to deal with might well distract him from the less distinct window reflections. Inside lights could also help by making the interior more visible than his reflection. Good ideas, and easier to try then draping all the windows LOL.

Carol, I've seen seed feeders that were like a tube feeder inside a globe of widely spaced wires, meant for keeping big birds out while permitting songbirds to eat... I wonder if there's something you could rig around your feeder like that? It would need to be big enough that a 'coon's reaching arm couldn't quite get to the suet, though, and that could be pretty big.

I know some people mount their suet feeders to the underside of a board, so the starlings don't steal the suet... what if you did that but used a fairly big piece of wood, so a raccoon could sit on top but wouldn't be able to reach around to feeder on the other side? I have a feeling one of those half-dome "squirrel baffles" wouldn't deter your visitor for more than a minute.

Once an animal has found a food source like that, they'll do a lot to continue getting it -- a block of suet is a big reward. It sure would be entertaining if you could put up a security camera to get video of your varmint's efforts to get around your attempts to foil him...