Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Suggestions for a bear proof bird feeder

This morning, I heard the dogs in the neighborhood go crazy with howling an yowling. "Must be the bear" I thought to myself. Sure enough, I saw bags of scattered trash when I went throuhg the epicenter of the yowling a few hours latter.

Another bear related note: --
A neighbor suggests this for a bear proof feeder:

Hi Everyone,

A few years ago, we used a pulley system like the one mentioned here
to keep our birdfeeders out of reach of the bears. It worked for
about a year but then the bears started to figure it out. The first
bear to figure it out climbed up a tree until he was higher than the
metal cord that we had running between two trees (about 15 ft off the
ground). Then, he jumped down and grabbed the cord as he fell. This
method worked for him but it was a long jump down. We put the pulley
system back together, and the next bear (or maybe the same bear)
figured out which rope lowered the feeders. He pawed at it until he
got the feeders to fall.

We abandoned the pulley system at that point, and my husband
constructed a new system. We have a 15 ft tall metal pole sunk in
concrete, and 4 arms coming off of it near the top. There's a feeder
on each arm. We have an electric fence (3 fence posts with wires
going around them making a circle with diameter of about 2-3 ft)
around the base of the pole. We have a long pole with a hook on the
end to put feeders up on the arms (or take them down). This system
has now worked for 2.5 years or so. We've observed bears (in the
daytime) trying to get at our feeders, and they get completely
spooked when they touch the electric fence (it's not a huge shock -
we've touched it to see what it feels like). From what we've
observed, each bear never tries again after getting shocked once.

If anyone else is interested in setting up a system like this, I
could take some pictures and post them. My husband could provide
technical details. We really like this system because we can leave
the feeders out all the time with no worries that we're helping
corrupt bears.

Claire

Mountain Lions Sited on the Neighborhood on Saturday

Just a quick report on a great wildlife sighting from a Neighbor:

Brian and I saw three mountaint lions on Magnolia this past Saturday night
about 11:30 pm. The cats were in the road as we came up, roughly 2.25 mile
mark. We guess it was a mom and cubs since they were traveling together,
but don't know for sure. Got a solid look at one, two dropped off the road
quickly but the long black tipped tails are unmistakeable!