[mou] any advice?

[Sara Rene' Martin]

Birding in the backyard has become a huge part of my life in this last year.  Over the winter months I purchased a peanut feeder and it hangs from a smallish tree just off my deck.  The lowest branch where my feeder is hanging is 7.5 to 8 feet off the ground.  I had hairy, downy and yellow bellied wp and both flavors of nuthatch and multitudes of chickadees and even a junco who figured out how to hang and feed over the course of the winter.  All much to my delight.  I had never even seen a rbnh until this winter.  

I have battling what I thought was a battalion of squirrels, who also delight in my passion to feed the birdies.  I had my husband tighten the hooks so they couldn't be unhooked yesterday.  I love the birds, the squirrels are welcome to what they drop.   I even had a large bag of netted suet completely disappear.  I blamed my husband-he just looked at me blankly.

In the middle of the night I heard something in the  backyard.  My first thought was someone is going to take my birdbath...sad.  As the motion detector light brightened I saw what I thought was a large long hair and super fuzzy cat sniffing under the peanut feeder.  As I watched it turned its head up to the hanging feeder and my large cat became a fox.  After a few more seconds, a larger animal, what I guess to be the male trotted into the light.  The female sniffed further into the night.  I watched the male contemplate the feeder, sniffing and creeping around the tree assessing the situation.  He took about 15 seconds of planning and then ran up the tree and stood on the branch of the feeder.  I woke up my family to see the fox pair.  I didn't know a fox would climb a tree.  He gave up and they wandered off.  We went back to bed.  30 minutes later, 4am, I heard more noise.  This time a raccoon climbed the tree.  Family up again, we watched him manhandle the feeder, give up, and wander off.  However, this morning I was sad to see the feeder pulled up into the tree, pulled open and dumped.  This is the third night in a row.  The battle ensues.  Any suggestions against the squirrels, raccoons, or fox?   

Side note,  my chipping sparrows are nest building in the bush right outside my front door for the second year in a row.  




_________________________________________________________________
With Windows Live for mobile, your contacts travel with you.
http://www.windowslive.com/mobile/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_mobile_052008
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080511/e1070433/attachment.html