> Hi Tweets,
> In answer to Elizabeth Noyes, who wrote:
> >> I have sighted several Pileateds before, and I was wondering if there was
> >> any known way of attracting them.
> Robert Dunnell replied:
> >try suet!
>
> Which is a useful suggestion, but requiring some elaboration, as with suet
> come both starlings and squirrels usually; both will hawg the stuff down as
> fast as they can and the native birds don't get much chance. There's a type
> of feeder, described below, which goes some distance to stymy them.
>
> For woodpeckers, a suet feeder which forces birds to feed directly upside
> down while clinging to the bottom is best. The best type is a wooden roofed
> version with a grilled space (1/4 in. mesh: small enough for woodpecker
> bills to get to the food, but too small for squirrels' snouts) on the very
> bottom with space for a suet cake.

Actually, I found a easy solution, which solves the visibility problem you
mentioned but which I trimmed out. I took a normal Square wire-mesh suet
feeder, and hung the chain from the center hook on a plastic 'squirrel-proof'
dome. If you adjust the length of the chain of the feeder, the starlings
can't get in to the top of the suet feeder, but woodpeckers can hang
upside-down from it just fine. We've seen pileated and downy's, as well as
the red-morph flickers at ours, none of which appear to have any problem
whatsoever. At one point, we had two chickadees sitting on the top of the
cake, and a flicker hanging below, all feeding furiously! 8-)

Steve Mansfield steve at nwnet.net
NorthWestNet Network Engineer 425-649-7467