Humane Ways To Keep Squirrels Away From Your Camera Bird Feeder

Camera bird feeders have a major advantage over regular bird feeders: endless high-definition videos of your flying visitors, including the ones you missed seeing in person. Unfortunately, that also means getting a front-row view of every single squirrel that decides to stop by uninvited for a snack. Humanely keeping squirrels out of bird feeders is mostly about picking the right feeder type and location that squirrels can't access as easily. There are deterrents available, but some are more effective than others.

Squirrels can take over bird feeders of all kinds. It can be especially disappointing with camera bird feeders, though, which often connect to your phone or computer and send an alert each time motion is detected on the feeder. Getting excited to see which species of bird has visited your home only to see yet another squirrel is pretty disappointing after a while. Plus, smart bird feeders are significantly more expensive than most traditional feeders.

Camera bird feeders may also require mounting on a surface, which means you can't use a squirrel baffle, a cone-shaped attachment for a pole that prevents squirrels from climbing. If you have that type of feeder, you should "make sure that the surface itself is smooth and doesn't have good purchase for climbing animals," as Charles van Rees, Ph.D., Conservation Scientist and Naturalist, and owner of the Gulo in Nature blog, told House Digest in an exclusive interview. But ultimately, other types of feeders are more squirrel-proof. "There are modified designs out there that don't have to be mounted on a surface, which seem to do better and are a bit harder to climb," van Rees said.

The location of your bird feeder makes a huge difference in preventing a squirrel take-over. "Squirrels are more likely to be able to access a feeder that is close to a tree or another easily climbable surface," van Rees exclusively told House Digest. "The further out from trees (i.e., the more isolated) your feeder, the better it will do for favoring birds and deterring squirrels."

Van Rees also recommends mounting your camera bird feeder on top of a thin, smooth pole — not wood, which squirrels can easily climb. A squirrel-proof bird feeder pole also needs to be tall enough that squirrels can't leap onto it from the ground, or over 4½ feet. You also have the option of adding a squirrel baffle to the pole for extra protection from agile climbers. Only certain camera bird feeders can be mounted on a pole, so it's something to look for when shopping.

You'll also find smart bird feeders with a range of built-in squirrel deterrents. Some come with fences that are designed to keep squirrels from accessing the feed; others have hinged gates that are weighed shut when squirrels sit on them but remain open for birds. "Squirrels are very smart and typically figure these out after a while, but they can work for a time," van Rees said. More effective are bird feeders that can recognize squirrels via AI software. They either shut down access to the birdseed or deter the squirrel by flashing lights, ringing an alarm, or even allowing you to yell at the squirrels via a two-way speaker. Whatever it takes!

There are other ways to prevent squirrels from stealing food from your bird feeder, but their effectiveness varies. One option is to add capsaicin to your bird seed. Capsaicin is the chemical that makes peppers spicy. According to van Rees, birds can't taste capsaicin, but mammals can.

"In my experience, capsaicin can be very effective for some individual squirrels and less so for others," van Rees told House Digest exclusively. "This is probably similar to how some people are extremely sensitive to spiciness, while others are less so, and also how some people develop a 'tolerance' for spiciness over time." In his experience, capsaicin doesn't reliably deter every single squirrel, and even one persistent critter can cause problems for your bird-feeding efforts.

Visual decoys, such as owl statues, are even less effective. First, they have the added consequence of scaring birds away, van Rees explained. And second, "most animals of any kind eventually habituate to decoys and learn to ignore them," he said. Rather than spending extra money on iffy deterrents, focus on creating the right squirrel-proof set-up.