Hello all......I feel very fortunate, because I have 4 species of resident
Woodpeckers year round in my backyard. The most impressive to me, although
somewhat of a recluse is the Pileated Woodpecker. He loves the very tops of
my 3 Magnolia trees and ventures back and forth between the 3 of them.
Right now, the Magnolias are full of red berries and he seems to be very
busy carrying many and storing them for winter. The Redbellied, Redheaded,
and Downy all love the homemade Suet I make for them and it doesnt last but
one day, unlike the store bought brand which will stay there til the cows
come home. I'm not greedy, so if anyone wants the recipe for the homemade
Suet, just ask and ye shall receive, I just don't want to be too forward
and assume you want it and post it here without asking. Of course it's
available all over the net, but I change the ingredients a bit. I wish you
all lots of Woodpeckers in your backyard.....facinating birds huh?!!....Ayri

At 11:40 AM 9/29/97 -0700, you wrote:
>> 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
>
>
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