Community Chat

[occasionalrain]

Birds will waste energy coming to the missing feeders. Birds need fed more in winter and snow than summer. Don't begin feeding Birds unless you are committed to continue. 

[Sooner]

We quit a few years ago because of pests arriving and attracting other pests to the yard, like skunks. It seems the bird feeder was attracting a whole chain of animals to the yard.  

Only the opossum and a couple of raccoons roam through sometimes now at night--infrequently foxes. And of course the village idiots of mammalia--squirrels! 

[sabatini]

I too loved feeding the birds & live in AZ, in a migratory path area. It was such fun to see the occasional totally unfamiliar bird, & have to look it up & discover what it was.

I miss those days.

But I too stopped feeding because of rats. It's just not worth it.

For those of you who're curious about poison: There's a product called RatX which is sold at Ace Hardware. The guy who told me about it said that it's frequently used around chicken yards & production areas.

It's not a 'secondary' poison, meaning if an owl or hawk eats a poisoned rat it won't affect them at all.

It only kills the rats which are a scourge to those areas.

[wilma]

I liked watching the birds from my sunroom, but we stopped feeding them due to rodents. 

[Krimpette]

I, too, had to stop feeding the birds due to rats.  I now have an exterminator service regularly.  I miss the birds, but I'm in a townhouse community and did not want to cause my neighbors to have to deal with rats.

[KittySoftPaws]

@stevieb  And I also had a bad experience. Many years ago when I was still living with my Mother, we moved into and rented a small farmhouse. We brought our our newly adopted female cat with us. Unbenounced to us, there was rat poision under the sink and she got into it. We immediatley took her to the Vet, but she didn't survive. We also found out she was pregnant with one kitten. It was heartbreaking to say the least. We will never, and should never, try to control nature and it's creatures as they are all here for a reason. 

[RedTop]

Rats are exactly why we no longer feed the birds.  Based on the numbers we were seeing in broad daylight gave us a good idea of the problem around here which is when we had the exterminator add multiple bait traps to our monthly service.  

Our daughter added bait traps around my parents house, which show activity each month, but the real problem is with the boys in the trailer above her who are so careless with their trash.  I'm not sure we will ever get rid of all the rats around here!

[Burnsite]

I had an incursion into my house by rats, and learned a lot about them from Billy, the guy who came to exterminate them.  (I saw one at least 12 inches long in my kitchen and dropped my coffee pot.  These rats never made a sound but accordingt to Billy they were living in the inch or so behind my dishwasher.  We used traps and he sealed up all the little holes in my 1960s house.

Billy should be a philosopher--he said to me, "All rats have a PhD in survival." 

I never have killed animals in my life, I like them.  Live and let live is my philosophy.  But I had to deal with these rats and used rat traps, which don't always kill instantly, but these did.  I never saw a rat dropping.  Never heard a sound.  What I saw was a giant rat! 

Billy told me that his three daughters all have cats, and that cats are too smart to confront a rat.  It's true--my cat Lady May was with me when I saw the first one. She stayed close by me and did not attempt to attack the rat, or a few others we saw later.  They came down from the attic.  And they did live behind the dishwasher, too.

One of my rescue friends told me that when a mamma cat sees a rat, she makes a very alarming cry to her kittens, NOT to mess with them.  Since my cat was found in the wild, in poor health herself, but with thriving kittens, she clearly opted out of rat confrontations. 

Billy sealed up every entrance in the house, and they did not come back.  He was such a nice guy, despite his occupation.

[gidgetgh]

We used to feed the birds at our old house. Until the feeder attracted rats.  Which then a few made their way into our attic (nowhere else thankfully). 

I had a company come out. He pointed to the bird feeders and said get rid of those, which we did, that day.   He then did an attic exclusion thing which cost 42 gazillion dollars.

No more feeding the birds for us. 

A neighbor 2 up from me at my new house (our houses are close together) put up some bird feeders in his backyard several months ago. I wish he'd take them down. 

[stevieb]

@KittySoftPaws  Oh, I am so sorry. I am a cat person so this hits home with me. In my case, I had no control over how the matter was addressed other than that I stopped the feedings, but the condo association had already installed those black pest boxes property-wide, which probably ended up hurting both chipmunks and squirrels in addition to the rats.