Homemade Woodpecker Suet Log Feeder
Recently the woodpeckers around my house have been giving me fits. A lot of this is my own fault due to my personal gardening habits, but I can still complain, can’t I? I have woodpeckers. They fly about the woods on my property happily, eat bugs, batter away at logs and generally partake in woodpecker activities. My frequent fliers are the pileated, red bellied and a little hairy. Well none of them come to my feeders. Of course they don’t! I have left them with too much natural food. I leave dead trees that are no danger to the house standing just for them. They are wonderfully full of bugs and the woodpeckers love them. They have built homes in them, it’s beautiful. I have also taken down a couple of smaller trees and just dropped them where they are, left to rot. These are high bird activity spots, in particular the pileated brought her babies to these where they foraged daily. I have also planted a lot of native berry shrubs for bird food. I even left a big ant pile that’s out of my way for the flickers. Yuck.
So as a result, the woodpeckers are quite happy with all of this natural food and ignore the canned stuff supplied by me at the feeding stations. It’s no big deal if they don’t land on a feeder so long as they are about, right? For some reason I want them on my feeders, go figure. So what I did was to take a dead bit of log and drill some shallow holes in it, stick a hook on the top and call it a bird feeder.
Method: Take a log about 3"-4" in diameter and 12" long, and drill some randomly placed 1"-1 1/4" holes in it. Make the hole about 1/2 to 1" deep. Stick a hanging hook in the top, and there you go, a suet plug feeder.
I placed this next to my "official" suet feeder in hopes of luring woodpeckers to the suet, but no go. They are landing and feeding from the log, but still ignoring the suet feeder. Those rascals. I even have a recycled plastic plug feeder with the same food in it but again, no go, they land on the log. The food I am using is Peanut Butter Spread Bird Food, available through Wild Birds Unlimited, and they seem to love it. So do several of the smaller woodland birds.You can also make your own with this easy recipie:
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup crisco shortening or other shortening
4 cups yellow cornmeal
1 cup white flour
Just mix it well and store in the fridge. I have also cut up store bought suet cakes and smashed those into the holes, they work well. Some people smear peanut butter on tress - not me, to many bugs here and squirrels!
The log feeder is a bear to clean, they do get gunked up so I am hoping my woodpeckers adapt to the much easier to clean suet stations and I can take the log down. But if woodpeckers will not come to your feeders, yet you know they are out there, try the log. It’s a natural for them.
