Wed 1 Nov 2006
I suspended the pillow feeder this morning, not too far off the ground, just to see what would happen. Initially it was simple for the squirrels to get at the easy nuts at the bottom, as seen in the clip below.
Unfortunately I had to be elsewhere this afternoon so I wasn’t able to monitor the cam and couldn’t check the pillow till I got back. When I did get back, at dusk, I went and took a look and every single nut had gone, including the difficult ones at the top. So this hasn’t been a challenge to the squirrels either and I missed all the action. I’ll try the same setup tomorrow but I don’t expect it to last any longer than this one.
One problem with this setup was pointed out by Zach, the risk of a squirrel getting trapped inside the bag. So I turned the bag around and opened both sides. That, of course, makes it easier for the squirrels to get in there without having to chew their way in. But if I have the top and bottom open instead, the nuts fall out the bottom. I can’t think of any other safety measure that would work equally well, so the smarter squirrels are just getting in the side of the bag rather than having to work for their nuts. If anyone thinks of a better feeder idea that isn’t likely to accidentally suffocate a squirrel, do let me know.
This post, as well as the picture and video from it are © 2006 Chris Osborne, originally published on The Backyard Voyeur. The “Pillow Feeder” is his feeder project based on my (Zach Glenwright’s) Backyard Bag Feeder Project…
Hung Up, 11-1-06 [1:56m]:
November 1st, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Cool! But I of course, taped more that went on later…! It’s cool that your squirrels instantly take to new ideas about the feeder bag, not even needing to get used to it before going right at it. It’s laying down, next day it’s vertical, and now it’s hanging, and they just keep up with it! I don’t know if my changes are more drastic when I do my setups, but usually when I change something with my projects, it takes the squirrels at least a week to get used to the ‘newness’ of what I’m trying to do… Either they’re more skiddish, I’m doing something drastically different to them, or I just don’t keep my projects out long enough (I usuallly set mine up at dawn and run them until 10am or so, and then bring them in (mainly because I don’t like leaving expensive cameras outside for prying eyes to see…) maybe I should just let everything set out longer…
As far as making the project even safer for the squirrels, I’d still say the best thing to do would be to still try and find some foam, like cushion foam that you can use from somewhere. It’s a lot easier to work with than pillow foam, and if you use that, you won’t need to double and triple-bag everything the way you’ve been doing with the Nu-Foam (so that also cuts down on bag costs :)) … Also, if you use that method, then you can seal the foam in the bag, so they won’t have any other way of getting at the food other than chewing the bag to get to it, which is why they’d be going into the bag in the first place - if it’s chewed up enough, and then they go in to get a nut, there’ll be all kinds of already squirrel-made places to get out if they do get a little stuck… Another benefit to the foam is you can then also make the recessed holes to put additional food in, making it both harder to get to initially, but at the same time easier to get out, because the food stays (or should stay) in one place in the bag instead of falling down to the bottom… One final precaution in addition to the other measures (which I do when I do large-form projects like this) - make a lot of small twig-poked holes in the bag, maybe all the way around up the sides, a few on the edges, one or 2 in the middle - not large enough to get food out of, but large enough so the inside of the bag isn’t as much as a confined space. I’ve found old couch cushions around the area (from when people toss their old couches out) that I’ve made into foam pieces for projects, cut down to the size of the bag, then completely cleaned and dried, and then put into a bag and used as a project - that’s how I usually build my bag feeders - it shouldn’t be that hard to find foam like that if there’s someone throwing out cushions or something similar to that. It’s just a little weird explaining why you’d want their old cushion to the people that are throwing it out -
November 2nd, 2006 at 9:56 am
I agree entirely, a proper piece of foam is the way to go and I had already considered perforating the bag for added safety. I just don’t have an upholstery store nearby (I wish we had English-style High Streets instead of anonymous shopping malls dotted everywhere with little indication from the outside of what shops are within) and went for the first thing I could get. Your arrangement is much better than mine, no doubt about that. I raided the local thrift stores for cushions (pillows, as they call them here) and came up blank for foam ones, and people don’t just dump stuff out around here. But sooner or later I hope to get hold of some foam and will follow up on the idea of making the holes rather than just letting the contents fall down inside the bag.