Darryl wrote:

"Jim, don't know about capsicums, but to foil squirrels buy Safflower seed
and the varmits will not touch it. "

Thanks for the info Darryl. Where do you get Safflower seed? Wild Birds?
Of the vast majority of birds that I attract (black capped chickadees, house
finches and house sparrows - haven't seen any gold finches yet this time), I
am most interested in attracting the chickadees and have a squirrel proof
globe feeder (it really is - I watched a squirrel try to get to the seed
today) that I fill with black sunflower seeds. That seems to work pretty
well for them. Just a few house finches have the knack of grabbing onto the
feeding stations to get to the seed. Most finches don't even bother and of
course all the house sparrows can do is watch. I have found the 25# bags of
black sunflower from Eagle Hardware to be cleaner then the lowest priced
black sunflower from Wild Birds so get most of my sunflower seed there, and
Eagle's price is a little better too.

I also have a wooden 6 sided roofed feeder with a central plastic feed tube
and small fence that I put mixed feed into (black sunflower, millet, and a
few peanuts - a standard pack available in Costco). This attracts the house
finches and house sparrows. Even though it hangs with a thin cable from a
hook, the squirrels are able to get down the cable, and get into the feeder.
I think that the squirrels quadrupled over the winter. Most folks around
here think they are 'cute' and feed them peanuts and walnuts. The squirrels
bring the nuts into my patio area and bury them, and eat out of the feeder
when it is available. That's the feeder I'm considering using the capsicums
in. That feeder had about 20 finches/sparrows around it yesterday when a
hawk landed in a large apple type of tree about 25' away. Needless to say
the feeding birds scattered like crazy, except for 2 that were in the
feeder - they were out of sight of the hawk and literally froze for about 10
minutes before flying away. The hawk (I think it was a red tail, I couldn't
see it well through the branches of the tree) flew away after about 10
minutes also, without any small birds. I have had hawks here before but
figure that if nothing else I'm at least contributing to one level of the
food chain. I also have a thistle feeder but need to get the upside down
variety to keep the house finches away. That's one feeder the squirrels
won't touch either.

I just started my feeders again after about a 10 month hiatus. The cats are
the ones that discouraged me out of business last year. I have a large
ground floor patio and flower bed area outside my apartment with a 6' fence,
and it doesn't slow the cats down. I considered getting non-injurious cat
traps, as recommended by the King County Humane Society, but the thoughts of
a howling cat in one of those things plus waiting for 24 hours (or longer if
you trap it in the middle of the night) for Humane Society pick-up backed me
off. It's kinda like the recent 'discussions' on Tweeters, I hate the cats,
but I still have to live with my neighbors (lots of cat owners in my
apartment complex) and don't want to come across like Scrooge. Now, if some
how I could stuff the birds with capsicums

.

Jim Brewster
BrewinKent at msn.com
Kent Washington