bears vs bird feeders

[upthesaukee]

Bears 1, feeders and us 0!

I decided to put up feeders in our back yard after having bears pull over our very nice wrought iron feeder stands in the front yard over a year ago. Twice. Make that three time.

I strung wire about 9 feet off the ground and put some bottles on the wire to keep off the squirrels (feeders and us 1, squirrels 0).

On Friday morning, around six AM, I was awakened by a really loud sound of the bottles on the wire, and thinking it was a squirrel evening the score, I looked out the slider to the porch overlooking the feeders and saw a large black bear sitting down eating seed from the square house like feeder we have. He had climbed one of the trees the wire was attached to and pulled it down to his reach.

I stepped out on the porch (raised and screened in, with no steps up to it) and yelled at the bear and clapped my hands really loud, several times. The bear moved down the banking toward the stream, and then started back up. I again did the yelling and clapping thing, and he grunted several times at me; even got on his back legs, front legs off the ground a couple of feet, and then ran off to the left, stopping once to look back at me, before continuing across the road, and heading back up toward Alton Mt.

Bears 1, feeders and us 0.

Here are the claw marks on the tree, which in the next picture is the tree closest to me, with the wind chime on it.



Here are the feeders re-strung, no bottles to draw attention, now ten feet off the ground, requiring a step ladder to fill. Squirrels soon to be able to even up the score, and probably surge ahead.


Hopefully, bears to lose interest, and we will be able to square things up here.