Keeping Bird Feeders away from Bears, Squirrels, and the Benefits of Little Birds as Co-Workers

Little birds. Over the years I have found them to be very valuable partners in my life! This started by accident when my good friend Moose (We got to know each other through our common interests in tiny houses and photography. Check out his work here!) gave me a bird feeder he was no longer  using. I had never really thought about feeding birds at all before that. But with the feeder sitting here, I thought why not hang it up with some seeds? There was obviously already little birds around here. I do live in the woods surrounded by trees, bushes, and plenty of good bird perches and hidden nesting spots, but most of the time I didn't see them very up close as they flitted about their business. It took a few weeks for some birds to find the feeders, but then they must have told their friends because then it didn't take long for a while lot more to show up. Now this became fun! It was fascinating for me to be able to see so many of them up close as they visited the feeder and paused for a minute.  

 Now years later I have more than that one feeder, a pretty good setup that keep the feed going to the birds and only leaves whatever they spill for things like the squirrels to eat, and keeps Burley, myself, and bears all safe by not becoming a food hazard for them. You can see the whole setup in action in this video. As well as a whole lot of looks at some of my more frequent winter visitor birds.

For those who prefer reading and still shots, here's how the setup I have works. I can not make any guarantees for anyone else, but I have lots of squirrels, some coons and deer, and black and grizzly bears that frequent my yard. None of them have ever gotten into the bird feeders in the years I have used this system. Above you can see me lowering the feeders to the ground for ease of filling. 

This puts all the feeders at a level where I can easily reach them to refill. I feed plain black oil sunflower seeds year round, and sometimes some thistle/niger seed in the summer. The birds who like that either are not here in the winter or seem to prefer the high fat content of the sunflower seeds to help stay warm in the winter. 

While that first feeder Moose gave me was the thing that got me started, I can not recommend that feeder style. This one I am holding however is wonderful! You can find the same one here or take a look at the other sizes offered by the same company. As you can see if you watch the video above, there are indeed a lot of squirrels around and none of them have ever gotten into the feeders. The only exception is there are a few flying squirrels that come out at night, and they can glide over to that original feeder, land on it, and get some seeds. There's only a few of them and I don't mind that. But even they can not get into these squirrel proof feeders. In the above photo, you can see the feeder in the open position. And below, if you put a little weight on one of the perches like a squirrel would, the whole exterior metal part slams closed, and the bigger critter can't get to any seeds. 

So that stops the squirrels, but a bear could tear that metal apart I am sure. What stops them is how I have the feeders hung. The cable the feeders hang from is anchored between two trees with one end knotted tight to it's eye bolt, and the other side running through this little pulley and then down to where I can reach the end and tie it off. This could also be done between two posts, the side of your house and a post, etc. The point is to suspend the cable high enough that a bear can not reach it from the ground, and have the feeders far enough out from the sides trees/posts that a climbing bear can not reach out and grab them either. Generally for grizzlies this is 12 feet off the ground and 6 feet out from the sides. If you only have black bears I assume those dimensions could be a little less, you should be able to find that info from a local agency on what your bears could reach. And, while I do not have house cats here due to all the larger predators that eat them, I would think this same setup would protect feeding birds from them as well. The pulley setup lets me get the feeders back to that hight but also easily lower them to the ground for me to fill.

Each feeder is hung from a little carabiner clip like you can see above. And that clip is knotted into the cable so each feeder stays spaced out evenly and can't slide around as I raise and lower them. There's nothing magical about the 4 feeders I have hanging, that's just how many I had that fit nicely into the space I had between the trees. You could do more or less. At least up to however many you can handle pulling back up and have supported by whatever your two anchor points are. These 4 work quite nicely for me, give options for a lot of birds to feed at once without being crowded, and are light enough even when full for it to be super easy for me to pull them back up. 

If I ever have a critter, like a rodent, figure out how to chew through that cord, I plan to replace with something like a wash line cable. Smooth coated to slide easily through the pulley and I don't see anything being able to chew through that steel. But nothing has done so yet, so I am still using the cord. 

So that's how I do it. But back to the why. Of course I find just watching their antics and behaviors fascinating. As I write this there are probably 30 different birds around the feeders with more flitting to and from various trees and pausing on twig tips right outside the window a few feet from my face.

But beyond that, they do a lot of work! Work that would be very hard for me to do as a person. I kind of learned this by accident. For example, the first year I had a garden here I got a good many cabbage worms on my cabbages/broccoli/cauliflower/etc. They like that whole family of plants. It wasn't too bad, I picked some off and dusted the plants with some D.E. (diatomaceous earth) to kill them and still got a good harvest. Generally over years of growing the same plant in the same general area, those bug problems get worse. As they have found a good food source they like and reproduce more and more every year. But this past year I grew about 40 heads of cabbage (plus broccoli etc!) and only found two cabbage worms total all year. I credit this almost entirely to my bird patrol. When I wake up in the morning, the window right beside my head looks out over the garden. So literally before I pick my head off the pillow, I can see what's happening out there. And there are little birds everywhere! They hunt and peck around, on, and under each and every leaf of every plant. I can't even see most of what they are finding. But if I spent all day every day out there crawling around with a magnifying glass, I am sure I would never find as many bugs as dozens of birds do just in the process of going about their day and looking for yummy buggy meals to eat. So I have almost no bug issues in the garden. They also seem to put a serious dent in the mosquito population which makes hanging out around the bonfire in the evening much more pleasant. So to me, the amount of work they do is very worth supplementing the seed part of their diet to keep more of them around!

I will also mention that having places for birds to nest, perch, and hide are very helpful to them. Like trees, bushes, and especially any very dense areas. So planting more of these would also be helpful if you are not already surrounded by lots of trees and bushes like I am.

Here's just a glimpse of some of the various birds that come by at some point or another in the year. Above and below are goldfinches in their duller winter colors.

Above is a Cassin's Finch. 

Above and below the bright ones are male Crossbills. The duller yellow one is a female Crossbill. 

Some kind of sparrow, there's a lot of kinds and I don't know them all. These guys never come directly to my feeders as they prefer the ground. But they do clean up seeds on the ground that other birds spill. 

There are various Grosbeaks. Above and below are Evening Grosbeaks. 

Above and below are Black Headed Grosbeaks. 

Another ground feeder that likes to clean up spilled seeds and does a lot of garden patrolling is the Dark Eyed Junco. They come in different shades. Above and the two shots below are all Dark Eyed Juncos of one strain or another. 

Above is one of the two Nuthatches I get, a Red Breasted Nuthatch. I also get a few of the larger White Breasted Nuthatches but they seem more rare here.

There are also several woodpeckers. They are great bug eaters as well as sometimes stopping by the seed feeders. Above is a Hairy Woodpecker. 

Above is a Downy Woodpecker and below is a Yellow Bellied Sapsucker. 

These Steller's Jays are too big for the bird feeders, but again they sometimes stop by and clean up spills.

Another Grosbeak, this time Pine Grosbeaks. These first two photos are both males.

Both of these are female Pine Grosbeaks.

And then the ones that have a bit of a special place in my heart both because they were the first birds to find the feeder back at the start of this journey, and they are the ones that stay here with me year round. Not coming and going seasonally like many of the others. The little Chickadees. Above and below with the striped heads are Mountain Chickadees.

And then their close cousin, the Black Capped Chickadee.

So that's a look at how and why I feed birds. I think this is something I will do for the rest of my life if I can thanks to all the many benefits I get from my little birdy co-workers. Hopefully that general feeder setup is helpful for others who have had a hard time keeping their feeders from being destroyed by other wildlife and can benefit lots more people and birds!