Today I want to show you how a good squirrel feeder should look like. There are also some on the market that are not suitable at all.
We have built our own, because we could not find a good one in the trade, and informed us on the Internet, what is important.
It is very important that the front window does not go all the way to the top and does not close with the roof, but has a gap of about 1 cm to the roof.
Ok, in our case the gap is a bit big. That’s why the tit manage to get in, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Also, the feeding box is quite large, but now a squirrel fits completely inside (or sometimes two) 😉.
Because if a second squirrel jumps on the roof, while another just sticks the little head in the feed box, a disc closing with the roof could act like a guillotine. And it often happens that two squirrels or more occupy the feeder as you can see 🙂
It’s also good to have a small piece of wood sitting on the end of the viewing pane so the squirrels can’t hurt themselves there.
The wood should be as untreated as possible. In any case, do not buy boxes made of pressure impregnated wood, this is harmful to the squirrels. In fact, it sometimes happens that they gnaw on the wood.
The cracks should not be tightly sealed or glued, so that the box can dry out again and again and mold does not form.
The lid should not be too heavy, so that even the smaller squirrels can lift it. We used a thin plastic sheet.
The box in the photo above I have seen in a garden market and find it very good. Only the lid could possibly be a little too heavy.
The box here we got as a gift. We will rework it, so shorten the window a bit and add a little wood. We will also replace the lid with a plastic one.
Hang the box on the tree, preferably at a height where preferably no cat can get to it, but you can still empty the box (not so easy and we have to hang ours even higher). Or put on legs, we made the back leg a little longer so that the box is slightly tilted forward. This allows rain water to drain off better.
Fill with nuts etc. and wait and see 🙂 Usually the squirrels catch on very quickly how to get to the food!
