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The Peanut Feeder
Many people overlook the peanut feeder component of their backyard bird feeding station. The feeder work wonders in attracting nuthatches, chickadees, and woodpeckers. It also can serve as way to distract Blue Jays from your main feeder station. There are two types of peanuts you can offer birds:
Shelled peanuts are typically offered in a wire mesh feeder. These feeders are long and cylindrical (much like a tube feeder) upon which peanut-eating birds cling. The shelled peanuts are then extracted from within. A variation on this design is the Bird Quest peanut feeder. This wire mesh feeder includes a spiral that cork-screws around the feeder from top to bottom, in essence providing a perch. The advantage to this model is that woodpeckers such as the Red-headed and Red-bellied seem to really like the spiral and cling to it readily.
The disadvantage is that when dealing with peanuts, perching birds like grackles and starlings are a real problem. Provide a perch and you are more likely to invite these unwanted guests.
Hopper Style Peanut-In-The-Shell Feeder
An offering of peanuts-in-the-shell is a great way to bring Blue Jays under control. These birds are an important part of your backyard as they are an alarm bird, warning others of danger.Use a hopper style peanut feeder. Taller than the traditional hopper feeder, two Plexiglas sides with quarter-size holes comprise the front and back of this feeder from which peanuts are extracted.
Not much else is able to handle the shell of a whole peanut so this feeder really is reserved for the Blue Jay, though I have seen the
Northern Cardinal
and Nuthatch eat from this feeder as well.
Pest Control
Squirrels love peanuts. You’re going to need to take steps or they’ll clean out your feeders or destroy them trying. There are peanut feeders available that place a cage around the main tube. The separation between the cage and feeder needs to be about 8 inches. This will also discourage the grackles and starlings. Alternatively, you could invest in bird quests twirl-a-squirrel. The feeder hangs by a hook attached to the mechanism. The weight of a squirrel hitting the feeder causes the mechanism to spin the attached feeder, thereby dislodging the squirrel. The twirl-a-squirrel is designed for feeders up to 10 pounds. My tests have shown that this squirrel control mechanism works best on small and medium sized tube feeders, particularly their own models. However, this mechanism does not have enough power to be effective on the wooden hopper feeder.
Thus, it may be necessary to take alternative steps to keep squirrels out of your blue jay feeder. You may accomplish this with a Sheppard’s hook and baffle, but only if you can isolate the feeder by eight to ten feet.
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