Only fair to tell you all I am leaving SSiW as I keep rubbing folk up the wrong way and its easier to just go. Nice to have known you all!
That’s a shame @henddraig. I hope this doesn’t sound patronising, but I have always found your contributions interesting and helpful.
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I don’t understand, did something happen somewhere when i wasn’t looking.
Heddiw - Today.
Britheg werdd ar ysgallen y gors - dark green fritillary on marsh thistle.
Cheers J.P.
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This is a bit of a shock @henddraig - hope it’s not too late for you to have second thoughts.
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The trials and tribulations of bird feeders.
We have had a bird feeder dangling from our window for some years (seeds in the summer, fat balls in the winter) and the birds have shown their appreciation by leaving the digested products on our window. More recently a grey squirrel had been attempting unsuccessfully to reach it:-
Yesterday I installed a multi-feeder on the other side of our drive (see below). This morning I found the 2 feeders on the lawn with a huge crow strutting triumphantly beside them clearly saying “Blasus Iawn, diolch. Ble mae’r pwdin” 
Any tips on how to protect feeders from crows, please, (apart from a 12 bore shotgun which I’m not YET ready to consider. 
)
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Can you find a way to fix them to the hooks so that they aren’t easy to lift off? I know that will make refilling them harder, but it could slow the crows down.
And is that a squirrel looking in your window?! They’re cheeky here, but not quite that much!
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Thanks Sionned, Yes I’ve done that, but our crows are remarkably resourceful. They just need a few seconds, for instance, to break right into the laying part of our chicken coup to steal and consume an egg or two. Crows are very handsome and intelligent but so are many other miscreants. 
It is indeed a grey squirrel at our window, scrabbling to get up to the feeder. They have come here (without visas) from USA, I understand. They have displaced our native red squirrels over a large part of the UK, but efforts are now in place (even quite locally) to restore the red population by the introduction of pine martens. I’m not sure exactly if pine martens predate grey squirrels preferentially but the trials are proving quite successful. As you might expect, however, the introduction of pine martens has not gone down well with everyone. They are especially unwelcome to chicken keepers.
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I’ve tied feeders to hooks to stop marauders, but as Sionned says, they’re equally difficult for me to remove. I have a peanut feeder inside a cage, which keeps off the bigger birds; the great spotted woodpecker can still, just about, reach the nuts from outside.
At my last house, I tried desperately to stop a red squirrel crossing the (risky) road from a wood to get at my bird feeders. It managed to dismantle ‘squirrel-proof’ feeders, and when I cunningly suspended a fat ball from a thin string, it sat on the bird table reeling it in hand over hand, with a disdainful look on its face. I only solved the problem by putting up a squirrel feeder in my neighbour’s wood, filled with ruinously expensive hazelnuts. So you could offer food to the crows of such delicacy that they leave the bird feeders alone…
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Thanks Bronwen. I am resigned to the extra hassle of disentangling the feeders from now on.
I am envious of your previous house being adjacent to a red squirrel population. I don’t dislike grey squirrels even though they are designated as vermin now, but I’d love to see the reds return.
One thing I’ve noticed this year about our feeders which goes back to the beginning of the year is that there has been a dramatic change in species (or genera) using the feeders. We used to get the “pretty” species such as tits, finches, nuthatch, treecreeper and G.S. woodpeckers but now we only seem to attract sparrows in huge numbers. Its almost as if the word has got around and they have crowded out the other species.
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Heddiw - today.
Nyth o dryw - Wren’s nest.
(a gentle finger tip assures me there are eggs, but no chance getting a camera inside for photo).
Cheers J.P.
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Try moving the feeder closer to the house or to other shelter - bushes, trees etc. I’ve found that the thugs favour exposed feeders but the more agile tits etc are quite happy with a few obstacles to dip & dive around.
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PS great views you’ve got there @HuwJones
You’ve won tonight’s star prize for posting the 3333rd message in this marvelous thread. 
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Thanks for all your helpful advice.
Yes, the views of the Cambrian Mountain foothills are lovely - all year long.
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Another problem with bird feeders apparently…I have always fed the birds with 'recommended feeders and at times have had problems with squirrels but last winter I had a big problem with rats…generations of them playing happily on the lawn…I don’t like killing them but enough was enough and I had to call in the rat man…only to be told that it was because I was feeding the birds. Am not sure what to do for the best now as I certainly don’t want to stop feeding the birds. Any suggestions gratefully received please.
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Thanks for the warning, but with one voracious and ferocious cat and one dog, we are not troubed with rats.
As a PS to yesterday’s posts the ******** crows got one of my tied on feeders off again this morning! I used my full range of English and Welsh swear words. (Isn’t nature marvellous? 
)
PPS The good news is that the woodpecker is back but it appears to be Lesser Spotted.
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I sympathise @AnneEvans We had this problem in our previous garden. I found that siting the feeder in the most exposed place helped as our rats didn’t like straying too far from their runs or from walls, but it sounds like yours are pretty bold.
Our birds would eat sunflower hearts, peanuts & fat cones without making much mess at all so I just alternated these, usually just 1 or sometimes 2 of these 3 things at a time. I was underfeeding the birds so that there would be very little left for the rats to be interested in. I avoided seed mixes as the birds would literally feed the rats with these themselves!
Pob lwc!
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Thanks for the advice @pippapritchard and @HuwJones . Yes, even with the ‘no mess’ variety of bird seed it certainly gets scattered so I will try the rotation method… Usually it is the jackdaws that seem to scatter the most seed when visiting but they haven’t managed to dislodge or break the feeders …yet .
I had thought of getting a cat again having had several over the years with no rats but didn’t want to decrease the bird population either. My lovely Corgi doesn’t have the rat killing instinct so I expect I’ll have to borrow my son’s Welsh terrier if they return!
Glad to hear the woodpecker is back Huw.
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