Many years ago my mother wanted a little bird house installed right next to her front porch for her birthday. My mom loves to feed the wild animals and watch them bounce around her yard so me being the dutiful son I said I would get her one. On her birthday I installed a nice bird house that sat on a 5 foot tall post. One of the things my mom loves to do is feed the neighborhood squirrels. So when I came to visit her a week or so after I had installed her bird house I noticed that it was already falling over and looked in rough shape. I knew I did a decent job building and installing it so I asked what happened. My mom informed me that her squirrels love her bird house more than she did and they were causing the damage.

I was not an expert at squirrel proofing your bird house but I can tell you that I was developing my own ideas on squirrel proofing your bird house that were none too pleasant. So I started to do some research on humane ways for squirrel proofing your bird house and I found out that squirrel proofing your bird house is not only a common problem but one that leads to some very ingenious solutions.

Some Suggestions

Squirrel proofing your bird house takes a little patience and a lot of creativity. For instance, squirrels can taste the spice in chili peppers but birds cannot. So one way for squirrel proofing your bird house is to throw some chili peppers in your feeder and the squirrels will get the message. It is actually the capsaicin in the chili peppers that does it and there are some capsaicin based mixtures you can get especially for bird feeder that will help in squirrel proofing your bird house.

Probably the best squirrel repellant I have seen are the bird houses that have all of their perches on sensors that are activated by the weight of a squirrel. Once they are activated they give the little feller the ride of his life by spinning and bouncing up and down in a motion that eventually convinces him to leave and possibly never come back. So armed with some new information I am convinced that if I am asked to get the squirrels out of my mom’s bird house I can do it. Now if I can just figure out how to keep the cat away from the bird house then I will be all set.