Watching the squirrels attempt to scale my bird feeders often provides as much entertainment as watching the birds themselves. Last weekend, to give the squirrels a treat, I hung a simple squirrel feeder that holds a corn cylinder. It’s essentially a long bolt with a wing nut at the bottom, which attaches to an eye screw that I mounted on a birch tree.

While we used to have only red squirrels, these days the big, fat gray squirrels outnumber the reds. It took one of these gray squirrels just five minutes to discover the new setup.

The squirrel did not disappoint and provided an entire afternoon of entertainment.

The following day, I found that the corn cylinder was gone, and prints were left in the snow–thwated by a raccoon.

Now, I face my next challenge. This winter has been snowier than in the past few years. With one to two storms each week, dropping at least a few inches of snow each time, I need my tall muck boots to wade out to the feeder for refills.

While enjoying my coffee on the sofa, I noticed something outside that caught my attention. I knocked on the window, scaring the squirrel away, but he returned shortly after. He ignored my protests the next time until I opened the window and told him to move along.

The snow has built up to the point where the squirrel can leap and scale the critter guard on the feeder pole. Once again, I donned my tall muck boots and went outside to raise the baffle, all the while being watched by the squirrel from the woods.

So far, the adjustment is working. We’ll see how much more snow Mother Nature has in store for us this year!