We have three bird feeders hanging off the railing of our kitchen back deck. I try to keep them filled with black oil sunflower seed. They’ve been emptying with astonishing rapidity, considering the small size of the several species of bird who come to feed, usually a seed at a time.
The culprit, of course, is one extremely clever grey squirrel. (Or perhaps fungible grey squirrels take turns.) He climbs from the ground and attaches himself upside down to a feeder, where he can considerably lower the level in one feeding.
Poor little guy. Why shouldn’t he have his own grub so as not to rob the birds? Yummy unsalted peanuts from the supermarket. As soon as he discovered them, he went to work:
HE ATE AND ATE.
My taking pictures from behind the sliding glass door didn’t scare him a bit. He looked me right in the eye and went on munching.
MUCH MORE DELICIOUS THAN BIRDSEED!
At last he’d had enough.
TIME TO LEAVE. (AND TELL THE OTHERS?)
That night it rained. What do squirrels do when it rains?
(NOTE NEAR-EMPTY FEEDERS THAT WERE FULL THE DAY BEFORE.)
Guess we’re going back to the store today.
ON BEING OLD 
There is nothing like squirrelling away good things for a rainy day. I like the bird feeder and who would not eat from such a lovely designed container nor sit in those beautiful curved chairs. And what a great oulook. Are they birch or poplar.?
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The chairs actually are not that comfortable without a cushion, Gerard. But yes, the design is beautiful. (That’s why we bought them.) The “outlook” is a piece of dedicated land (not to be built on) bordered on three sides by the units of our condo development and on the fourth side by a public street. In summer the leaves are so thick and lush you can’t see the units on the other two sides. Deer walk through and feed there. I agree it’s great to find something like that within a town. (We don’t live in the country.) But as to telling you what kind of trees we have, all I can say is that’s what was there before the British colonists came to New Jersey in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Birch or poplar? Don’t ask me. I’m a city girl.
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I am a city boy, from Rotterdam.(nice to meet you) I have some knowledge of a few trees and ask questions at times to get a conversation going, break the ice at it were1 😉
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Yes we have 4 feeders — 3 black oil sunflower and the other changes. Niger in the summer and suet in the winter. I also get corn cobs for the squirrels. They will come up to our sliding glass door and rap on it if there isn’t any food out. The possum also cleans up under the feeders as do wild turkeys.
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No possums or turkeys for us. We occasionally get a nighttime raccoon. And deer stroll through the woods, but (evidently) not up one flight to feed off our kitchen deck. I learn from you all the time, Kate. Corn cobs? We have nothing to stick them on, but after reading your comment I did go out and buy a dried corn “critter” mix designed especially for squirrels and other small wildlife!
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I don’t stick the cob on anything. I just roll it in the yard. At first a squirrel will start pulling off the kernels and eating the inside seed. Then as he starts to realize that he can’t eat it all and someone else might, he will grab it in his mouth and run off with it. That’s hysterical because sometimes the cob is as big as the squirrel! Crows are the other critter that loves corn.
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I have to see that! I’m going back to the store to buy some dried cobs!
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marvelous!
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Thanks, Shimon. He was a cute little fella, wasn’t he?
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Variegated squirrel using his tail as rain cover while having lunch… 🙂
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That’s a very long tail!
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even gray squirrels have tails long enough… 🙂
for more ‘squirrely’ tidbits…
http://goatsass.com/blog/2014/02/18/gray-squirrel-3/
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Adorable squirrel photos in the link!
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I’m so glad you fed the squirrels. Though our closest neighbors consider them pests, my husband and I put our dry corn and nuts for them. However, sneaky people that we are, we also grease the metal poles from which we hang our bird feeders to keep the bird seed for the birds. It’s funny to see the confusion squirrels exhibit when they slide down the pole. Without grease, they scoot right up and drain the feeders.
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That’s a brilliant idea, Aunt Beulah! The squirrels are draining our feeders too, even though we’ve provided them with their own dish of food. What kind of grease do you use, and how often do you have to grease the poles?
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