Squirrel proofing a bird feeder can be a daunting task. There are many squirrel proof feeders available these days, but most of them work by limiting the physical access squirrels have to the feeder. Pepper suet feeders take a different approach that works surprisingly well.
Winter is a tough time of year for the birds in our yards. Many of the sources of food consumed in the summer time are not to be found in the winter months. The berry bushes have ceased production, insects have gone out of site, and what food is left is often covered by snow or ice. So, to help our avian friends we try to find a way to feed them the right foods in the winter, and a favorite choice are suet feeders.
Bird suet is a high energy food, and with it’s high calorie count it’s a great food for those cold winter months. The suet is cooked by rendering fat from sheep or cows, and for variety is sometimes mixed with some other bird favorites like cracked peanuts that creates a combination that has lots of energy and is easy to eat in the cold of winter. The rendered form of natural suet can go bad at warmer temperatures so many people use it only as a food in the winter. These days there are suet products that have been formulated to hold up better in the summertime, so you can use it year round if you like, but it’s not all natural suet. You simply put it in a suet feeder and the birds love it.
Like many types of bird food that we put out, the local thieves like squirrels love it just as much as the birds, so we have to find ways to discourage them. There are some quite clever designs in squirrel proof feeders that are meant to keep squirrels out with moving access doors or spinning feeder tubes.
Nature has provided its own ingenious solution. It turns out that over the years, peppers have developed their heat by creating capsaicin, the chemical responsible for the “hotness” of peppers and other capsicums. But it has almost no impact on birds, so they eat it at will. But the mammals like squirrels can find the heat most offensive.
Armed with this knowledge, we can try adding pepper to our suet to offend the local pests like squirrels and rodents. With hot pepper suet the birds are unaffected, but the feeder pests can’t tolerate it. With just a little smarts you can get rid of the squirrels without expensive feeders.