My birdy buffet turned out to be not such a great idea for the birds. I didn’t think through the fact that most birds need to land on something before they can eat. Fact, right? It seemed to be the case for the birds around here anyway. We saw several birds try real hard to enjoy the buffet, but it didn’t work. Eventually I knocked the whole thing over to see if the birds would eat the seeds from the pine cones on the ground, but I didn’t see much interest. Poor birds.

A few days ago I noticed one of the hanging pine cones from the porch missing. This afternoon we discovered why…

There's the bird seed bandit!

When I first noticed the squirrel he (she?) was hanging upside down from the railing, grabbing the pine cone. He brought it up, got situated, then went to work biting through the string!

He quickly got it free and took a moment to show me his work :)

Then he popped the pine cone in his mouth and away he went with it. Smart little bugger.

When I realized the pine cone plan wasn’t working I ordered some real bird feeders. Actually, I’ve been looking for suction cup bird feeders in local stores all winter, with no luck, so I went to trusty Amazon and found just what I needed. They came yesterday and this afternoon we put them up. Let’s see how quickly the squirrels figure these out. Hopefully the birds get a few days head start!