Subject: Birds and hot peppers
Date: Dec 16 11:53:45 2003
From: Rob Saecker - rsaecker at thurston.com


At 6:57 PM -0800 12/14/03, Abby Jaworski wrote:
>I'm not sure I'd use red pepper to discourage squirrels. The folks at
>Cornell Lab of Ornithology are apparently recommending against it. See:
>
>http://www.wbu.com/edu/sqr.htm

The above link doesn't provide enough information to make a judgement
on, in my opinion. Is the substance in question capsicum extracted
from hot peppers? If so, there might be cause for concern, but
without a citation of the Cornell research, it's hard to tell.

If, on the other hand, we're talking about ground or shredded whole
hot peppers, then I don't believe there is any likelyhood of harm to
birds. According to Gary Nabhan, peppers have evolved to discourage
mammalian predation and *encourage* avian predation, because their
seeds are destroyed by mammalian digestion, but not by avian
digestion. So birds eat hot peppers without harm, and then distibute
the seeds far and wide. (If anyone wants the cite on that, I can
provide it, but the book in which it appears seems to have migrated
to my wife's office, as it isn't in the house.)

As for the effects on squirrels, I can attest that adding cayenne to
my suet has reduced the frequency of squirrels at my suet feeders.
Generally, that means they go rob the ground feeder instead. As for
their ability to adjust to the taste of hot pepper, I would assume
that would be similar to larger mammals, where some learn to prefer
the taste of food with pepper, and go to great lengths to find ever
hotter pepper varieties with which to spice their food. Haba?eros,
anyone?
--
Rob Saecker
Olympia
rsaecker at thurston.com