I've been squirrelled!

One of my life's little pleasures is my bird feeding station. It's a mock gothic stand with hanging hooks festooned with 2 seed feeders, a suet cake holder, a water tray and a flat feeder tray. I keep it well stocked with mixed seeds and suet cakes stuffed with seeds, fruit and meal worms. It is sited between my dining room and kitchen windows so I can see it easily from both. My PC is in the dining room so I can watch the comings and goings and keep note of my feathered visitors. However the local squirrels are also partial to sunflower seeds and suet cake and frequently raid my feeders.



suet cake feeder

 I play a game with the squirrels. I watch them run along the fence then sit and watch. If it seems all clear they drop to the ground to cross to the feeder. They pause at the base then shin up the pole like greased lightning. The flat tray provides a handy sitting spot within squirrel reach of the seed feeders and suet cake holder. They have had a good chew at the seed feeders but the metal ones I now use are resistant to squirrel teeth. The old plastic ones got chewed to pieces.
I came down this morning to see the suet cake holder was missing from the feeding station! I'd been raided in the early morning light! I found the holder on the ground a few feet away where the squirrel had tried to drag it away but it was a bit too heavy. He/she had obviously tried to nibble it open but had to make do with just eating as much of the suet cake as it could through the bars of the holder.
The tits love the suet cake so I have to make sure I always have one hanging up. They come at set times in the day and in the space of 20 mins I can have 50 tits of various varieties visiting the cake holder. The long tailed tits come in flocks of around 12-15 and seem to all get on the feeder at the same time. Blue tits and great tits come in pairs or families. I have been looking up collective nouns but have not found any for tits, so I've been thinking about their behaviour and habits and come up with an 'excitement of long tailed tits', because they sit in a nearby tree and twitter loudly before descending on the feeders, a 'flurry of blue tits', and a 'strut of great tits', because they do strut as though they own the joint, and a 'whisper of coal tits' because they are very shy and come and go very quickly and silently.
Over the last year I have had the feeding station I have seen:-
robins, dunnocks, thrushes, blackbirds, thrushes, starlings, wrens, blue tits, great tits, longtailed tits, coal tits, greenfinches, chaffinches, bull finches, gold finches, black caps, nuthatches, green woodpeckers, lesser spotted woodpeckers, wood pigeons, collared doves, hedge sparrows, and a few warblers which have not stayed long enough for me to tell which variety they are. Then there's the squirrels, and field mice who scurry about picking up the left overs and dropped bits. I am sure rats come round at night too but I have never seen any.
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 I have a foxes earth deep under my rockery and they come and go as regular visitors or sunbathe in my garden.

(sorry for poor quality - taken quickly with phone camera)

I have my oldest son here at the moment. He's a regular Sunday visitor coming for lunch with Mum :) How nice you think, well, yes it is good to see him, and I always get a hug but he doesn't like sunday roast dinners and it's always sausages and mashed potatoes for him regardless of what I have! it does make choosing what to cook easier, but it is very boring!

The sun is beginning to drop in the sky and I need to get out with the dog before dusk and early fireworks start up again :( At least clear blue skies mean we get the best of any light going and it delays night time just a little. Should be a good sunset tonight :)

Bye for now. x