I have a bird feeder outside my kitchen window – we have a gorgeous array of songbirds here in eastern Virginia that makes for delightful viewing. A couple months ago, right around the onset of winter, three different breeds of woodpeckers started visiting my bird feeder. As beautiful as they were, their instincts overpowered their understanding of the whole “free lunch” concept. Every time they would visit the feeder, they would peck at the wood and glass incessantly before helping themselves to a sunflower seed or two. After they destroyed two cheap bird feeders, I thought about ways I might be able to fortify the structures to withstand the pecking habits of the woodpeckers and finally came to the conclusion that I would be no more successful thwarting their hammer-headed zeal than I would be trying to teach my dog to vacuum.
The incredibly simple solution to my bird woes came to me as soon as I threw-out my narrow-minded bird fortress idea – I found a type of suet cake that is designed to attract woodpeckers (I guess it’s the peanuts and tree nuts in the mix that turns it into crack for woodpeckers). Now, the woodpeckers have their own feeder that provides them with a non-destructive way they can work for their food and my new standard bird feeder is free from attack (it is so popular that there’s usually a waiting list for the songbirds).
My intention, all along, had been to provide food for ALL the birds. My initial approach failed because I was hell-bent on my one-stop-bird-feed-shop concept. A solution presented itself as soon as I realized that I couldn’t force my standard bird feeder to be something it was not designed to be. Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to go back and spend more time analyzing your problem and less time beating your dead horse of a bad idea.
Standard feeder with one bird on the waiting list:
Woodpecker feeding addendum:
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