This AM I had an especially good, if unusual, morning watching my feeders. When I got up, I looked out the window. Not a bad start - 3 Tufted Titmouse, 3 White-breasted Nuthatch & a bunch of House Sparrows. 
I retrieved my newspaper & flopped in a chair to read it. I covered the interesting stuff in about an hour & got up to look out the window. Wow, in a sapling between 2 of my feeders was a crow, looking around at the feeders. When he realized he'd never fit in those feeders, he took off behind the neighbor's house. First crow I'd seen & the biggest land bird I'd seen around my feeders. 
 
Since I heard my wife stirring, I went & told her. Crows are not unusual to our neighborhood, but around my feeders it was unusual. Then I went back to the paper to do my Suduku puzzle. I checked the window as I walked by. A female Cooper's Hawk was perched on top of my suet feeder, probably looking for a tasty songbird. I yelled at my wife to look our her window, which see did. Before I could even think of going for my camera, she left. Darn, that would have made a good picture.
 
After finishing my puzzle, I got up & looked out the window again. There was a House Wren, eating suet scraps that had fallen down on a square 1'X1' piece of metal I had put on the suet feeder's pole to keep the squirrels from jumping up to the suet feeder. It worked well. I'd only seen 1 squirrel try to jump up to the suet feeder. They all climbed the saplings & making some tremendous leaps, easily made in to the feeder or the piece of metal below it. 
I spent a good part of the summer, sitting by a lake with a fishpole in my hands, thinking of how I was going to outsmart those squirrels.
I bought 30' of some 40 lb. test musky leader. It had a braided metal core with a woven polyester ourside. It was only about as thick as 8 Ib. test monofilament. I tied one end to the largest tree in my small grove, a mulberry about 15 feet tall and the other end to my house. From the line I hung 1 of my small feeders & my large feeder. In the center was my peanut feeder, which the squirrels really like. So far, so good. But the real test will come this winter when food is getting scarce. Our old growth Oaks & Hickorys had a good crop this year. I should find out when the snow falls. 
Incidentally, I bought that large feeder at a summertime sale because very few Jays, Cardinals & other birds of that size fed at my feeders last winter. So far the Chickadees like it.
V. Lee Grover  
 
     
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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