155. Why are they looking at me?

It seems as though I’ve acquired a reputation for being a bit of a soft touch around here.  The wildlife here in Wavendon is becoming much too familiar.

Look what happened when I left the front door open one day last week: 

Recently, this kind of downright bad manners has been happening much too often and I'm not happy about it.  

“You’re an anatidaephobe,” Caroline told me later that day.

“No, I’m not,” I said, reaching for my laptop computer.

“Yes, you are.”

“I certainly am not," I huffed, opening the laptop. 

“You are."

“No, I'm not," I said, raising my voice a little, hoping Caroline was getting a sense of my indignation.  The internet was very slow that afternoon.

“I think you are,” she said, using the same tone of voice and facial expression as a mother asking her baby if he’s filling his nappy.

I said nothing.  I didn't want to argue until I knew what we were arguing about.  

There was silence.  She went back to writing some report or other while I frantically consulted the Oxford online dictionary to find out what on earth she had just accused me of and whether it was something nasty and unpleasant. 

Oh, so that’s what Caroline thinks I am.  She could be right.

“Well, if I am, you’ve got to admit I’ve good reason,” I said.  

“Told you,” she smirked.

“Yes, but you're only right in as much as I would be one if it were only a feeling I have.  But it's not just a feeling.  It's a fact and it really is happening so it can't be irrational and therefore I’m not whatever it is you called me."

I can prove it.  Look at these photographs.  I took them from the chair I sit in most of the time:

What more evidence do you need?

Anatidaephobia is “a pervasive and irrational fear that one is being watched by a duck” but I’m sure that unlike me, you already knew that.

But, as I told Caroline, I’m not a true anatidaephobe because my anxiety is certainly not irrational.  I am constantly being watched and not by just one duck - by lots of ducks.

As I write this, there are six outside on the lawn and they’ve been watching me all morning - just staring.

What do they want?

Postscript

Look what was left on the doormat when I eventually got the intruders to leave: 

It was the one furthest away that pooed on the mat.  At least the other four have the grace to look a little embarrassed. 

I spoke to Cyril the squirrel about it.  I introduced you to Cyril in “Smarter than The Average Felon”.   (Click to see) 

The first thing he said surprised me.  “My name’s not really Cyril, you know.  I told you it was Cyril because it rhymes with squirrel and I thought that would be very funny.  It’s actually Richard.”

Squirrels must have a weird sense of humour, if he thinks that's really funny.

“Who pooed on my doormat?” I asked him.

“That would be Fiona,” he told me.  “She does that sort of thing.”

“How can I stop ducks pooing on my mat?”  

“Baffles me,” he said.  

“I’m really baffled,” he went on.  “You have no idea how baffled I am.  In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I'm well and truly baffled.  I’m so baffled that…..”

“Will you please stop going on about that bloody Baffle?” I shouted, interrupting  him.  “It’s staying on the feeding post, so just accept it.  That food is for birds, not for you so get over it.”  

“That’s the whole point,” Richard shrieked, “I can’t get over it.  None of us can.  It's not fair!”

Then, Richard, or whatever his name is, scurried off up the silver birch.  He’s been sulking and avoiding me ever since.

I've told Fiona that she's not welcome here again until she apologises and promises that it won’t happen again.  

153. Smarter than the Average Felon

I’ve written before about the birds we see in our garden.  I have kept notes and the total number of different species I’ve seen, just by looking out of the window, is 34.

Caroline’s brother, Mark, gave us a bird feeder for Christmas.  It’s so intricate that it’s not just a feeder, it’s a bird feeding “System”. 

It took some time to erect.  First of all, a metal spike had to be hammered about 70 centimetres into the ground.  Then, a second piece of tubing was screwed (remember that - it was screwed) into the buried section resulting in a post about 2 metres high.  Finally, some curved hook-like pieces were attached to the top from which several vessels holding food were hung.

Bird food is expensive!  The first batch of various seeds and nuts that we expected would last for several weeks, cost £27.  

We were wrong about how long the foodstuffs would last. The photo above, taken only two hours after the system-launch, shows that the tube of sunflower hearts (just to the left of the pole) was already empty.
The most common visitors are robins, chaffinches, nuthatches and four kinds of tits. Greater spotted woodpeckers come as well. 

A plague of starlings descended on us early on. There must have been more than 20 of them, all squabbling and jostling for position but thankfully, they haven’t come back. 

Moorhens visit often.  They are predominantly water birds and their usual food sources are unavailable to small garden birds and so, to some extent, moorhens are intruding and somewhat unwelcome. 

The moorhens began by just pecking at the seeds that had fallen on to the grass below but they soon became adept at flying in and landing on the tray.  It is like watching a Boeing 747 trying to land on an aircraft carrier. 

Of course, it's squirrels that are the main problem. 

They are renowned for their ability to overcome any obstacle or impediment in order to get to food.  There are many videos on YouTube that show them doing that.

My first attempt to stop squirrels getting to the food was to rub the pole with candle wax hoping that they would be unable to grip and climb.  They could and did.

That inverted cone is intended to thwart them, hence it's called a Baffle.  It worked for a while but they are too clever for such basic, low-tech apparatus.  They tried to grab it and swing themselves up but it is intentionally loose and moves under their body weight, tipping  them off.  

To appreciate what they did to get to the food, you need to be aware of some facts and dimensions.

A squirrel’s body length is about 27 cm (11 inches).  A squirrel is able to jump about 120 cm (4 feet) vertically.  That ratio would mean an Olympic high jumper clearing more than 8 metres (26 feet) from a standing start.  

The world high jump record is 2.45 metres (8 feet).

The only way a squirrel could get above the Baffle was to jump and cling on to the post above it.  One of them stood on the low wall and prepared to jump:

He jumped,

landed and held on....

and there he is, sniggering and mocking me.  

I have worked out that he jumped about 95 cm (3 feet) vertically and 155 cm (5 feet) horizontally.  

Assuming that the point at which he grabbed the post was the highest point of the parabola of his jump - and it might not have been because he only jumped as far as was necessary - that would be the equivalent of a human long jump, from a standing start, of close to 22 metres (72 feet). The current long jump record is 8.95 metres (29 feet).

I needed to move the post further from the wall so that they didn’t have the assistance of the wall to boost the start but I knew that moving the post wasn’t going to be easy.  As I said at the beginning, it was hammered deep into the ground.  

I pulled back the curtains that morning to see this:

The little buggers had unscrewed the post.  The buried, base section is at the right edge of the picture.  It had not snapped or fallen.  It had been unscrewed.  Little buggers!

The seeds were all over the ground and the tits, moorhens, ducks and squirrels were gorging themselves.   

Did they have a meeting to draw up plans?  Were the birds in on it too or was it just the scheming, devious, cunning, kleptomaniacal, rodents, acting on their own?  Have they got tool kits, spanners and screwdrivers?

I put it together again, screwing it tight.  The next morning, it had happened again!  The post and containers were on the ground and all the seeds and nuts gone.

I am not beaten.  I won't give up, even though the squirrels’ need to get their paws on my nuts is probably stronger than my determination to stop them.  

Squirrels are very crafty and extremely cunning. I have to be cleverer and more astute than them.  There's pride at stake here.

I bought stiff plastic tubing.  The joint they have been unscrewing is 35 cm above the ground.  I threaded a 75 cm  sleeve of tubing on to the post so that it covers the join.  

Now, before they’ll be able to disassemble it again, they will have to use a stepladder.  If they can't break into the locked shed to get mine, they could bring their own and if they haven’t already got one, they’ll certainly make one.  

Then, they’ll have to work as a team.  

One squirrel will have to stand on the shoulders of another.  It will have to unscrew the post, gripping it above the piping.  

When it is unscrewed, they’ll have to lift the upper section clear of the pipe so that it can fall and this is why they’ll need the stepladder.  

Please don’t point out any flaws in this plan because the squirrels will hear about it and be forewarned.

They told me they wanted to negotiate.  

Here is Cyril, the squirrels' equivalent of Michel Barnier - the EU's chief negotiator on Brexit talks - arriving on time.  

Cyril said they wanted to come to an agreement on the strategic, operational, legal and financial issues relating to the processes and utilisation of the feeding system.  

Those talks got nowhere, mainly because I hardly understood a word he said.  

What's “dehiscent opportunism” for goodness sake?

The moorhens have suggested that if the squirrels do manage to dismantle the Feeder again, and they're fairly certain that they will, I should start leaving copies of The Times cryptic crossword, a couple of Word Searches and a Sudoku on the grass. 

They think that the squirrels will become so engrossed in trying to solve the puzzles that they’ll forget to dismantle the System.  We've got nothing to lose and so it's probably worth a try.  

It might just work.

Patrick sent me this video.  I called Cyril in, opened it to full screen and suggested that I might install something similar.  He laughed.

"That looks like fun," he said.