Attacks On The Bird Feeder!

[GoDawgs]

Yesterday morning the pole for the bird feeder was bent almost to the ground with the seed container on its side, several feet away. Of course, the squirrels were overjoyed at not having to go through all their antics to get to the seed. This happened once a long time ago, a one time event.

Pickles straightened out the pole (it's not real heavy duty like the other one), reset it in the ground and refilled/hung the feeder. This morning it had happened again.

25.01.17 Day 2 of bent seed pole.JPG

OK, there are no bears in the area. I've never seen a possum interested in any spilled seed around the feeder. Raccoon? Their little hands could probably get a grasp on the pole and with their weight at the top bend the pole over. I don't think deer would mess with it but maybe. Too much trouble for the deer. They seem to like things easy. Time for the game cam tonight! I think whatever's doing it will back and third time's a charm.

Any guesses as to the culprit?

[MissS]

My guess is the coon or the deer.

[bower]

Riveting subject matter!! I'm in the squirrel wars here, over my car.
Three wifi surveillance cameras on the car since Christmas Eve. Two nights fox, two nights hare, one ruffed grouse, two daytime squirrel appearances, and one neighbor cat crossing the parking area in stealth mode at night and detected as a "vehicle".
I need a game cam with a faster trigger, less AI.

[Seven Bends]

Looks like bear damage. Is it possible there's a lone bear passing through your area? We don't have bears living in my county or nearby, but every few years or so there are a few sightings and then the bear moves on.

I looked up a GA bear study (Strategic Management Plan for Black Bears in Georgia) and they say bears "may occasionally be seen anywhere in the state." Here's a map of their normal range and various sightings outside the range. The green shading of the range areas is from 2011; I don't know if the black-dot sighting info is more current, but definitely no more recent than 2018. Bear range and population is expanding pretty fast in much of the Eastern US.
.

1-bears in GA.jpg

If you're sure it can't be a bear, that pretty much only leaves deer, raccoons and human vandals. Can you bend the shepherd's crook with your hands (in a spot that wasn't already bent, I mean)? If so, maybe a raccoon could do it, but I think they'd just move on to someone's trash can instead. Deer probably would have grabbed the bird feeder and pulled, and I would expect the bird feeder to break off before the pole bent like that. But I'm just guessing here.

[worth1]

The illusive southern moose.

[rxkeith]

normally here, i would say a bear did it. when they come out of hibernation,
they are hungry. they will bend the shepherd hook down to the ground, damage
the bird feeder, and sometimes take off with the feeder, never to be seen again.
i still have not come across a feeder from last year. deer might eat fallen seed.
i don't know if raccoons are big enough to bend the hook to that extent at least
not any of our local ones. maybe yours are bigger? my guess is you have a bear
mooching. if so, it will keep coming back for an easy meal.


keith

[GoDawgs]

@Seven Bends, thanks for that chart. I see two sightings in my county and it's been at least 2018 since the last one here. Sightings usually happen in April when the world is waking up to Spring. If one happens along it's always a male following one of the creeks and headed south. DNR says young males do that sometimes looking for new territory. Nothing new for young males of all stripes.

Don't you know just when you need the game cam... it won't take pics. Changed the batteries, checked all the settings. It's an old inexpensive one so who knows. Definitely need a new one.

Pickles took the feeder and hung it on a similar pole about 25 paces from the bent one and nothing has touched it. That one is a lot stronger pole than the bent one. Geez, I hate not knowing!

[JayneR13]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QiUaZfkCW8

[GoDawgs]

Well, well, well... I believe I have the answer.





It was about 11:30 this evening when Pickles went into the dark kitchen for something and some motion outside the window caught her eye. The window faces the back yard. When she looked again she saw a big buck right there at the feeder pole. Since there's no feeder hanging there now (she's been bringing the feeders in at night) he was simply munching what seed had spilled onto the ground.

She alerted me so I grabbed my camera and a flashlight, tiptoed to the nearby French doors, pulled the curtain back a little bit and turned the flashlight on him. Then I took about four pics through the window. The camera's telephoto doesn't work anymore and I couldn't enlarge the photo any more without it getting too grainy so this is the best one of the four. As far as I could see with my naked eye there were four tines on each antler. Beautiful deer!

And I wonder if he's the one who munched down the old broccoli leaves in the garden. They were finished so I had taken the netting off in case anybody wanted a munch. Yep, the other day every plant had been munched hard leaving only the hard central stems and there was just one set of deer tracks with big prints in the soil. Bet they were his!

[MissS]

The deer are a determined bunch. I had a live trap set with apples and peanut butter to catch a squirrel. When I checked the trap it had been moved about 6 ft away. The wood chips had been dug in about 5-7 inches down and the trap was bent all over. They did get the bait.

It was a deer. It left it's foot prints outside of the bed where the trap was placed. The neighbors and I were amazed at how it tore up the place.

[worth1]

I've heard of them getting in the house and going nuts and tearing up the place.
One time I had a wild cat come unglued in my car when I left the window down overnight.

[worth1]

This has got to be central Texas.

[worth1]

In all honesty I had a wild flock of wood ducks doing this with me every day.
I didn't kill any but I've eaten wood ducks before.
They're the best wild duck meat there is.
Chicken fried wood duck breast.