A few years ago a friend of mine told me that birds are all but immune to capsaicin, the chemical in hot peppers that makes them hot. When his parents were having trouble with squirrels in their bird feeder, they mixed cayenne powder into their birdseed and viola, they had no squirrel problems. So when I got my house and set up a bird feeder, I mixed cayenne powder into the seed from the get go. A few squirrels came, took two to three bites, and then went away and didn’t come back. The birds, meanwhile, eat the seed with no issue at all.
This has not been perfect though. One squirrel seems to really dig hot food and will munch away on that spicy bird seed all day long. I definitely need to weed that one out of the population, I don’t want it passing along those heat tolerant genes.
I just got a .22 Air Arms S510 and this weekend, hopefully, am going to be figuring out which pellet it shoots best on low power, I have some 11, 12, and 13 grain pellets, and one of them should work well. With the right low power shot and my Donny FL Sumo, the spice loving squirrel should be toast, and the neighbors will never hear a thing.
I have a pretty flat yard and the neighbors are not as far away as I would like, so I plan to set up a primary backstop of plywood, and put it in front of my tool shed, as a secondary stop, not that I really will need it, but better to be safe. If I sprinkle some seed in front of the stop, and lots of cayenne powder, when I see a squirrel undeterred by this chemical warfare, it will be time to send it to the big bird feeder in the sky.
This has not been perfect though. One squirrel seems to really dig hot food and will munch away on that spicy bird seed all day long. I definitely need to weed that one out of the population, I don’t want it passing along those heat tolerant genes.
I just got a .22 Air Arms S510 and this weekend, hopefully, am going to be figuring out which pellet it shoots best on low power, I have some 11, 12, and 13 grain pellets, and one of them should work well. With the right low power shot and my Donny FL Sumo, the spice loving squirrel should be toast, and the neighbors will never hear a thing.
I have a pretty flat yard and the neighbors are not as far away as I would like, so I plan to set up a primary backstop of plywood, and put it in front of my tool shed, as a secondary stop, not that I really will need it, but better to be safe. If I sprinkle some seed in front of the stop, and lots of cayenne powder, when I see a squirrel undeterred by this chemical warfare, it will be time to send it to the big bird feeder in the sky.
