A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion Hobbies, Crafts and Creativity The Bird Lovers Forum Nocturnal feeder visitor

I had been very busy earlier in the week trying to get my mulch down and preparing for a dinner party, and had neglected to keep my birdfeeders filled, so yesterday morning I took some time and filled them all to the brims.

I got home from work last night at about 2 AM and noticed I there had been a visitor to my bird feeders. There was not a lick of birdseed or suet cake to be found.

Here are some pictures I took this motning.


Here is the bird feeder pole in my front yard missing it's feeder, and my cracked corn feeder that had been hanging in my dogwood tree. I have not yet found my suet feeder which had been hanging in the dogwood as well.


Here's where I found the missing feeder, 30 feet away.


My main feeding station with 2 feeders missing. The thistle feeder was not damaged and was still full.

Here's the other feeder pole in my back yard.


This is it's dismantled feeder. The staples holding the rope to the base of the feeder were ripped out.


This was my first picture of the day showing the investigative team I sent out to sniff for clues, and sniff they did.

This picture is a long distant view of the 2 missing feeders from my main feeding station.


Same view zoomed way in.


Another shot of the main feeder pole.

Wow, look at those tracks!!!

This track is 5 inches wide.


Harder to tell, but the track was also 7 inches long.

A decent sized bear, I'd say.

Definitely a bear! They are BAD to raid feeders in the areas where bear are present. Seems there MIGHT be a FEW bear in the Appalachian Mountains!

wow!

gloriosky.

More ornery bear pics. 2 nights in a row now. I kept my feeders in so no more damage there.


He went after my compost bucket knocking over my garbage can and my temporary rain guage in the process.


There was a ton of fresh tracks in the garden.


I found this about 150 feet from where it had been sitting at the back of the house. Some packets of wildflowers I had gotten from Lowes.

Teeth holes in my wildflower packets!!!

I managed to straighten all 3 of my bird poles and have rehung my feeders, but will be taking them inside when I go to work.

I'll bring my bunnies and come to your house, Terry. Bags and 'Bow have been VERY successful at killing and eating several bear including Grizzlies and Kodiak.

Bags amd 'Bow: Big, bad, bear-beating bunnies!

OMG< Terry--thank goodness that is all the bear (or bears) got to...

Raccoons do damage like that at my house...not quite so extreme but they definitely do! Darn little rascals!

We have property on Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. I've personally seen what those bear can do. We even had strong evidence for Cougars, too.

Twice in the past week and a half, my mom has had a bear climb one of the posts up on her deck to get to the bird feeders.

A few years ago, a lady who lives further down her road was out back mowing on her riding mower, when she noticed a mountain lion about ready to pounce. Luckily, she was able to scare it away.

Her husband called down to Virginia Tech to report it, and was told "There are no mountain lions in Virginia". He repeated again that his wife was certain she had seen one. The official said once more, "There are no mountain lions in Virgina."

So then the husband said that if there weren't any mountain lions in Virginia, it wouldn't matter if he shot it. The reply was, "No, no, no, you can't do that!"

My mom has heard them several times outside her house. They sound like a baby crying.

The one I heard 35 years ago one night sounded like a woman screaming. The sound curdled my blood. There were FRESH Cougar tracks in the vicinity the next morning. We were 'Coon hunting that night and it was about 100 feet away. The noise the dogs and us were making scared it up a tree. It SCREAMED, and the man I was with said, "I guess we'd better get back to the house now, boys." We all turned around, walked back to the truck without another word, and drove back home.

OMG Terry! I'd be scared to even go out of the house after dark! At least in the day time you'd see it!

If you live in an area that has bears, you can wear a necklace made of large metal jingle bells. You can also carry pepper spray. To determine if bears are in your area look for their droppings. You can EASILY tell bear droppings. They have traces of red pepper, and fragments of metal jingle bells, clothing, and human bones and hair.

Ha ha! I like that approach. There are no mountain lions, so it won't matter if I shoot one! The only way to deal with any sort of bureaucracy!

Thorn, you have the baddest bunnies I know of! Ours only get to fight koalas, so they are nowhere near as tough and vicious as yours.

We heard something scream just like you described above. It was about 16 years ago, when we first moved to Victoria. We were living on a farm property, surrounded by miles of forest in every direction, and in the middle of the night, we heard this blood-curdling scream from somewhere quite close-by. There are many rumours of panthers around rural areas of Vic. Sounds far- fetched, but what we heard definitely wasn't a native animal or human.