A year or two ago, I put chicken wire around our double-caged suet-feeder (suet cage inside a bigger feeder cage) to stop the red-squirrel from sitting inside all day and excluding birds from the suet. This frustrated the squirrel all right, and small birds could get in and out. But I noticed that sometimes when trying to get out fast, they could scrape & perhaps damage their flight feathers. So I took the chicken wire off. Especially since a Carolina Wren pair loves to come to the suet. (This Feb we have had only one of the pair coming.) Two-inch mesh chicken wire is too large to keep the squirrel out.
An interesting observation: the Red-br Nuthatch pair were the first to figure out how to get in through the ch-wire, then chickadees and carolina wrens. But the goldfinches just could never figure out that they had to perch and get in before they could get to the suet. They kept going round and round, never got in. Nari Mistry, Ellis Hollow Rd. -- _______________________ *Nari B. Mistry*, Ithaca, NY To see my paintings, visit http://www.ArtbyNari.com -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
