Donna,
I am in a 116 unit 12-building condominum community on the edge of Seahurst
Park forest in Burien. I have a top floor end unit, and, I also have bird
feeders on my deck; the forest surrounds me on two sides. It is a problem
with wind patterns blowing seed off my deck to lower decks and window
sills. Monitoring my feeder birds: I have purple finches, house finches,
American gold finches, spotted towhees, song sparrows, black-headed
grosbeaks, pine siskins, always juncoes and rarely varied thrushes in the
winter, Steller's jays, downy woodpeckers, northern flickers, black-capped
chickadees, chestnut-backed chickadees, red-breasted nuthatches---occasional
warblers at the suet such as orange-crowned, Wilson's, black-throated gray,
Audubon's, Nashville and Townsend's---very rarely a pileated woodpecker to
the suet, rufous and Anna's hummers, and highly infrequently, brown-headed
cowbird (seen once,) house sparrows and starlings in this particular
location. My worst pest bird is the rock dove coming in small flocks to my
deck seed spills, and, I chase them---creates an exercise opportunity. I do
have one highly territorial squirrel (jumps from nearby tree to my deck)
that keeps other squirrels away.....an allowable trade-off.

My particular building has 16 units and four stories. All 3 units directly
below me have smokers, and the unit directly below my immediately adjacent
neighbors also has a smoker, a chain smoker who sits on her deck puffing
away. There is no window I can open without this smoke wafting in, and,
cigarette smoke sifts up through my floor and walls to create an
unbreathable situation in a hall bath. I have to clean black and yellow
grime/dust on many surfaces in my home. The manager relayed to me that
other residents have installed extra insulation in floors to try to control
cigarette smoke contamination to their units. As the original covenants
allow smoking here, we were told these rules are difficult to change legally
even with the confirmed 2nd-hand smoke health hazard. If your HOA allows
smoking as does my HOA, that is a much more immediate health hazard and
impact on the home environment than that from parasitic rodents. Yes, the
ground floor units here do attract rodents, raccoons and opossums from the
nearby forest to both bird feeder and pet food offerings. Are you on the
ground floor? Here, we always have spillage around the garbage dumpsters.
I've seen rodents, raccoons, opossums, crows and other faunal opportunists
there, too.

Bottom line: If your HOA allows smoking and has untidy dumpster problems,
but, bans bird feeders.....stick it to them! Human buildings will always
attract critter parasites as much for the easy shelter as for the free
munchies. Modern technology and rodent control service may help; your HOA
should have that anyway. Merely not having bird feeders will not stop the
rodent problems in dense urban areas. You can start a revolt. Leave a note
at each unit, or, if you have email addresses---send email to all your
neighbors, or if you have an on-site manager and a commercial agency, your
message should go out to all residents through that manager. Stand up for
your quality of life BUT also seek solutions to better control rodent
problems along with the enjoyment of bird feeders. Look again at my bird
list above. Yes, if I had my own yard, would also plant flora to attract
fauna plus have feeders and maintain inspection of my home for infiltration
of rodents. Yep, takes work and scheduled maintenance; hopefully less than
$3000 mentioned to repair insulation. There are no absolutes to deal with
the ongoing war between humans and the wild creatures who have co-evolved
with human untidiness and easy pickings.

Wishing you a resolution more fair than 'taxation without representation,'
Maureen Ellis
Burien, WA, near Seahurst Park forest edge.

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 9:15 AM, <nightwings406 at aol.com> wrote:

> A few people have asked me to clarify my HOA situation. I am in a condo
> assn of 41 homes. I travel a lot and cannot attend all the board meetings.
> I have a tube feeder and caged suet feeder on my back deck. I use the
> already shelled seed so there are no shells falling to the ground. I take my
> tube feeder in at night. The HOA said they don't want any feeders, including
> hummingbird, because it will attract rodents. I cannot plant my yard any way
> I want as it is "common area" and has to conform to what the assn likes. I
> have lived here 7 years but we have a new board and they are running it to
> suit their needs. What I say to them is not listened to. Birdfeeding was not
> the only issue and some of the other changed items did not go over well with
> other homeowners.
> The latest on the story is that their new set of rules are illegal as they
> did not get a 67% consent of the homeowners vote. Actually, there was no
> vote they just made new rules and sent them out for everyone to follow. But,
> I'm sure they're busy working on figuring out how to get them pushed
> through.
> I want to thank those of you that sent me tips on how to fight this.
> Watching birds brings so much pleasure to me.
> Donna Ferrill
> "The Masters" at Mill Creek
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/pipermail/tweeters/attachments/20100724/ed30cc0b/attachment.htm