We have a bird feeder in our wooded yard, hanging down from a tree branch, its top covered with a 'squirrel baffle' of about two feet diameter.
We also have gazillions of squirrels that love to eat the stuff in the bird feeder (and deter the birds).
I made sure the bird feeder is hanging in a place where the squirrels can't jump to (it's about 10 feet away from anything else).
However, we have watched the squirrels climb down the rope the bird feeder is hanging on, heads up, and then slide down the baffle, swinging around the edge, and grabbing onto the bird feeder while falling (some quite impressive acrobatics).
I think having a larger baffle would solve that problem, because they would fall down too far away from the bird feeder to grab it. I am thinking about a rounded metal, wood, or plastic sheet, formed like a trashcan lid, but a bit larger (I'd like 4 to 5 feet diameter).
I'm not qualified to make something like that myself, and don't want to spend a lot of money on some custom built thing.
What object could I buy cheaply and 're-dedicate' to be a squirrel baffle?
Trashcan lids are too small, umbrellas are too easily destroyed (shredded) by the squirrels. A walk through the local home improvement stores didn't show me anything of that form.
Best Answer
Anything soft like plastic or wood would end up in a fail as they can get a grip or chew through. We found using an 1/16 steel cable rope was two small for them to grip but was plenty strong, after changing to the cable they did try a few times to climb it but soon gave up. I like squirrels and we feed them unsalted peanuts but the greedy buggers wanted the bird seed also, this was the best method we found to keep them out of the bird feeder with a very similar one.