Nesting Materials for Backyard Birds

This is an item that we completely love and one a backyard bird watcher can appreciate. A beautiful door wreath made out of bird nesting materials. Not only can you use it to decorate your front door, but birds can land on it and take some of the fluff use it to build their nests. The wreath is very attractive with it’s earthy colors and is made out of all natural materials which are safe for birds. The nesting wreath is made from feathers, cotton, hemp and aspen fiber and it is so soft! We are really taken by the idea of having a bit of living art in the yard with birds landing at our very door. If you are going to decorate the outdoors, why not make it green and part of the overall wildlife habitat? It’s a great gift for that bird watcher on your gift giving list who has everything or just for yourself. The feather your wreath is one of those small items that you don’t need but is sure nice to spoil yourself with! Find out about the Feather Your Nest Wreath or visit our page of backyard bird nesting materials for an assortment of nest building helpers.

Feeding Squirrels in the Backyard

Backyard bird watchers are forever attempting to keep squirrels out of bird feeders. To completely keep squirrels away from feeding stations, there are several squirrel proof bird feeders, and the best system we have found is by using squirrel and raccoon baffles on pole mounted feeders. However the idea of keeping squirrels, chipmunks and other four legged wildlife from raiding songbird feeders and keeping the birds from being allowed to eat is a system. Part of the system that works on our yard is by providing squirrel diversion feeders.

A squirrel diversion feeder keeps the little tree rats occupied and since it is set up specifically for them, a lot easier for them to access than a baffled or squirrel proof bird feeder. Hopefully this means they will use their special feeder instead of a bird feeder!

There are many styles of squirrel diversion feeders on the market, including models that hold wildlife mix and treats, or those which are more of a challenge for a squirrel and quite funny to watch. You can shop for a variety of them here: Backyard Squirrel Diversion Feeders.

Best Squirrel Feeding Station

The very simplest and least expensive type of feeder designed purely for squirrels is: Tree or Post Mount Squirrel Feeder

Tree or Post Mount Squirrel Feeder

This feeder is designed to hold an ear of dried corn and you can set one up easily, replace the food easily, and it does not cost a lot.  We occasionally use corn cobs, but to be honest, the squirrels easily eat an entire ear of corn on the cob in a day and then you have the trash of the stripped cob. Not that the trash is a big issue but we are firm believers in low maintenance! The less work it is the more likely any backyard feeding program will continue. Our recommendation for the tree mount feeder are Squirrel Log Corn and Nut or the ever popular with tree rats, Squirrel Log Sweet Corn

Squirrel Log Corn and Nut

The squirrel logs last a heck of a lot longer than an ear of corn. Considerably longer! And it’s a bit more work on the squirrels part to get the food off, instead of just ripping off kernels and dropping them all over the ground. The squirrel logs are compressed corn and equal to 12-24 ears of corn. As avid as we are about backyard feeding we would not be changing out corn cobs daily. The logs eliminate that need, the squirrels got lucky! They have a hole in the center for skewering on a cob feeder. Try them, you will not be sorry. It ends up being less costly in the long run due to how long they last. Since the squirrels love them and they are so easy to get to (unlike our baffled bird feeders), they head for these first before our feeders. It’s worked out great for us and helps to keep squirrels off our bird feeders, plus the birds feed off them as well. Particularly nuthatches! The nuthatches just love them. Chipmunks also scurry up the tree and nibble away on the logs.

Here are some photos of our backyard tree/post mount squirrel feeder using these treat logs. You can see that they are solid and the squirrel has to spend a bit of effort chewing them up. The squirrels tend to bite off only what they eat right then as it’s too much work for them to just throw food around. We like that part! Less waste and much less refilling!

If you try any of this out, please leave a comment and let others know how they work or you. These compressed corn logs are designed to fit any squirrel feeder that holds ears of corn, but we have only tried them on the tree/post mount feeder. If you have tried them on another style feeder please give a review. We’d love to know what works and what does not. Thanks!

Backyard Squirrel Diversion Feeding

Should I feed Squirrels? People ask if they should feed squirrels and other wildlife in their backyards to help keep squirrels out of their bird feeders. We say yes. In our personal backyards, we feed the squirrels and it does help keep them from frantically trying to get to our bird feeders and eat all the seed, let alone chew up and destroy expensive feeders. Understand that squirrels will always try to get to bird feeders so a feeder must be baffled or squirrel proof, but baffles and squirrel proof feeders are a separate topic. Here we are just going to talk about our systems of diversion feeding for the bushy tailed tree rats.

The above photo shows our main squirrel diversion feeder. It is a ground bird feeder table - you can shop a selection of these to purchase at: Ground Bird Feeder Trays. A ground table is fantastic for feeding squirrels and also helps to keep bully birds such as blue jays, grackles and starlings away from smaller songbird feeding stations. Again, the topic of bully birds is another post altogether, but we do have jays in particular feed from this table, as well as juncos and rufus sided towees who prefer to feed off the ground. These species rarely land on our elevated feeders.

The food we put out on our ground tray table is cracked corn, which is inexpensive. We blend the cracked corn with a cheap bird seed mix that has a lot of milo in it. The cheap mix is just about useless to attract songbirds since it is full of fillers, but great for squirrels and doesn’t cost a fortune to keep food out which the squirrels plow through. Milo is a filler food that the birds don’t care for in general but squirrels love. The seed mix does contain white proso millet which appeals to junco, sparrows, indigo buntings, also the mourning doves like it, so it has uses. Our advice on these food types is to purchase them at a local shop that sells livestock feed if you have one in the area. Cracked corn for used as chicken feed is cheap cheap cheap. (Uggh, no pun intended. Seriously). Just make sure that it’s straight cracked corn without diet supplements.

Our ground tray feeder is made of recycled plastic. We are absolutely crazy about it!! It is made of recycled plastic milk jugs and by golly is it easy to clean. It’s not often that we will recommend a feeder that costs more than other feeders, but the recycled plastic is honestly going to last so much longer than wood that the extra cost is well worth it. The legs don’t rot on the ground, the mesh screen comes out, and if the tray itself gets cruddy you can use a mild bleach solution to clean it. Note: remove screen before using bleach - don’t ever bleach metal!! This feeder is terrific for helping us keep jays, pigeons, doves, and other feeding hogging birds out of our songbird feeders. It serves more than just squirrels.

In fact, we replaced our wooden ground feeder table with the recycled plastic because it is so much lower maintenance. The wood on our ground table had aged well but the plastic is not porous like wood, so grime does not suck into the plastic like it does wood. We haven’t got enough food to say about this feeder. Here is one that you can buy: Recycled Plastic Ground Feeding Table

Recycled Plastic Ground Feeding Table

This model does come in a version with a roof, however we personally do not use a roof because we are in a drought ridden area and have little weather past hot or hotter. If it ever rains again we can put a roof on our table feeder. A roof will help keep the food out of the weather but we prefer the visibility of an open table. You may have a different opinion if it rains often in your area, or you have snow in the winter. In the case of winter feeding and snow, the roof is handy. It’s detachable so you can remove the roof in the summer if you wish. The mesh on this table is small enough to hold millet and screws in, we have had zero problems with it. The one in our picture is slightly different, however we actually own both and the green version is outstanding. Can you say hardcore bird watchers? This method of diversion feeding helps keep squirrels away from bird feeding stations, attracts ground feeding birds and is relatively easy to maintain. It works for us!

Tips on the feed: Food should not be placed directly on the ground as it gets moldy and goes bad very rapidly, but instead placed on a table or elevated platform. Don’t put out too much at one time. Corn molds quickly! Do not feed any animal or critter moldy food!! Only put out what they can consume on a few days and if it gets moldy, throw it away. This is why there is not much food on our feeder. It stays clean and we just drop a scoop of fresh food on it when needed. You do not have to use the same foods we do of course. There are plenty of specialty squirrel and chipmunk feeds available, corn foods and wildlife blends and mixes. Table scraps are also good for squirrels and chipmunks. The squirrel above is munching on a cut up piece of honeydew melon ring. Again, only put out small amounts so that is does not go bad and make backyard wildlife sick.

If deer are eating from a ground feeder, please be aware that straight corn is not good for deer!! Please do a little research on this prior to feeding deer at all. Deer feeding is an entirely different topic than diversion feeding.

The block on the feeder in the top picture is a small deer lick, a 4lb apple flavored mineral block. Squirrels and birds alike enjoy this so we use it for the heck of it. Finches in particular just love it and visit the mineral block daily. Finches will dig through fire pits to get minerals out of. Normally we use a 50lb mineral block - it’ll last for years, and deer of course visit it, but we need to replace ours at this time and were having a difficult time finding the larger, apple flavored deer block specifically. We found the smaller mineral block so just grabbed it in order to have one available to our yard wildlife. These are available in the hunting sections of stores. (Yuck). The mineral blocks made for livestock, cattle and sheep are not the same as deer block. However, mineral blocks made from goats, which come in a berry flavor, are a close match and are good for birds and squirrels. It all gets so complex, doesn’t it? A note on these blocks is they are primarily salt so you would not want to leave it on the metal mesh of your table feeder for long periods of time as eventually the salt will corrode the metal. Also, being salt, keep it away from plants of any sort. Salt will kill plants.