Big City, Little Homestead

Living rural in the city is great – you can do it, too.

Page 9 of 18

A Squirrel Buster Bird Feeder play-by-play 

November 5, 2018 /

Back in early summer, I went to Bird Fest (I blogged about it there). I put my name into the raffle, and what luck! I won!

Nature-Expert (formerly known as CCFA, or Centre de conservation de la faune ailée de Montreal) sent me the now-famous and very effective Squirrel Buster feeder (the Plus model) from Brome Bird Care (you have to see their “404 Not Found” page!). Now, as you might know, I don’t mind feeding the squirrels, but bird seed can be a bit expensive when you have a lot of ravenous mouths to feed over the winter, so having one feeder for the birds’ exclusive use is helpful. So here goes the pictorial, from its unboxing to a play-by-play of a squirrel trying to get the goods:

In the box: the feeder, user manual and bird ID kits, and a ring to support perching cardinals
Label and QR code (obscured by distortion)
I’m really not surprised; this thing is solidly made!
No Squirrels!
Here we have contestant #1!
He really can’t find a place to leap to…
OK so let’s try it from the top, shall we?
She/he is going for it!
So close, but WT…?
Oh! what a fail.
Here’s Contestant #2 (or maybe it’s still Contestant #1 back for Round 2)
Here he/she has perched on the vine that’s…just…
out of reach
OK, back to strategizing from the flower box
A perch and stretch, but not far enough!

So there we have it, folks. The Squirrel Buster on my front porch is definitely not for the squirrels. And that’s the way it’s gonna be!

Updates:

Here and above, some action pics of the feeder’s intended purpose. I participate in FeederWatch and take pictures because it helps me count the birds, but honestly, I take pics anyway because: cute. Here we have all six portals occupied (or maybe five). The flower box (below) stays there all year round so that they have a place to browse and get ready to launch their next volley at the feeder:

House sparrows on a snowy window flower box

Squirrels come and go, but every year I put the feeder out in November. Here’s a fresh victim contestant, obviously destined to fail:

Squirrel looking at a bird feeder
A new squirrel becoming acquainted with the Squirrel Buster

I’d just like to say that while I am a little gleeful here, I’m still a soft touch for the squirrels. They don’t have to scrounge for what scraps the birds scatter below. Here’s one with a nut I left out for it:

Climbing Hydrangea – in Bradford, ON

Vines for green walls  

September 17, 2018 /

My house is distinctive for the vines I have growing on it. The only other neighbours who have vines are a house on the end of a row, with a big wall to cover.

Virginia Creeper on the house and garage wall

The Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) adorning my home has been here for 6 years. It’s ropey all the way to the top of the eavestrough. I trimmed it a lot the past year to stop its spread across the house and into the soffits, but spread is what Virginia Creeper does. Though to be fair, it falls back on its own, so it’s not unreasonable, and the configuration changes every once in a while. This makes it great to green-up a wall, especially if you are willing to “tutor” it across a large expanse of wall. If you don’t tutor it, it will detach and hang when it gets heavy.

For two years, I also let one climb the back wall, on the shady eastern side of the house. At the same time, I nabbed a “real” ivy plant and planted it in the same place, to have both. Parthenocissus tricuspidata “Veitchii” – Boston ivy – is not a native plant, and it’s not from Boston! Its leaves spread out row upon row – nicely, and less rambly. There’s ample room – like 10m2 – for it to spread. But it stayed stunted, so I suspected that Virginia creeper inhibits other plants. The creeper had to go.

Continue reading
Red-winged blackbird
One of our famous dive-bombing Red-winged blackbirds

How can you protect birds during nesting season? Don’t cut trees. And: BirdFest.

June 9, 2018 /

Migration is pretty much over now, and all birds are where they want to be if they’re sitting on eggs in a nest, or raising a clutch of nestlings, or even (as is the case here) out showing their fledglings how to navigate the big world and find food. It might give us an opportunity to have a peep into their nest boxes and niches and see them raise their babies (mostly by web-cam — something we all love!), but it doesn’t mean the dangers they face are completely over. There are still things to watch out for in the city…

Tree Felling During Nesting Season

Every spring, members of my local birding club notice incidents of tree cutting and felling in and around Montreal during the period when birds are nesting. Even trained ornithologists have difficulty locating nests, so we’re concerned that these activities may harm or even be fatal. People need to proactively protect nesting birds, and not assume “oh it’s fine no one is nesting here.” How many times have we heard of Christmas trees arriving at their destinations with very frightened and hungry owls hidden in their branches?

Perhaps making matters worse is that, while tree felling is an activity a homeowner needs a permit for, the permit process might not take into account the season of the felling. Finally, the businesses that fell trees, like landscaping services, do not need to have a license from the Régie du Bâtiment du Québec. Theoretically, this is at least one reliable avenue for educating contractors.

What can you do if you witness tree felling during nesting season in your neighbourhood? One or all of the following:

Continue reading
Green driveway paver Montreal
I love my green driveway so much, I named it 1 Elation Way.

How cracks in my asphalt driveway revolutionized my life

May 11, 2018 /

If you’ve been to this blog at least once before, you’ve probably seen photos of my green driveway. In 2015, I converted a standard residential parking spot into a green driveway. It’s a portfolio pictorial. It took a month to “settle in,” but from mid-May, I’d gotten used to the results and I was quite happy!

Having seen the results over eight seasons (spring through winter, three years), I’m still pleased. It’s like an extra yard with cobblestone wheel paths, and after I got rid of my car, a space for my Adirondack chair.

And yet each year (just like before I put it in), some contractor dude drops by with a card to “fix” it. (I can’t blame him for pounding the pavement looking for clients, but still…). Sometimes he jots a quote on the back as to how much it would cost me to rip out my green driveway and put down some blacktop asphalt driveway.

You know, my green driveway cost a little more than what he’s quoting, because it was kinda fancy underneath, but I never will have to “repair” crack every five years ever again. No, thank you.

Crack repair

Because I used to have an asphalt driveway. About the only thing you can do on an asphalt or concrete driveway that you can’t do on mine is play basketball. And maybe make chalk drawings, but you know, the sidewalk’s right there, so that’s no biggie.

When I had asphalt, I had cracks in the driveway where plants would grow. (That’s why they’d wanna repair it.) But why would I let that crack bother me? Water percolating into the soil and being taken up by plants actually cools the air through transpiration.

“But frost heaves!” – it’s a driveway, not a highway; a little bump from a crack is not a problem.

“But bigger cracks!” More plants! There’s an aesthetic appeal to broken pavement, you know!

Why would I want black top + hot sun make my driveway and home hotter, rather than something cooling it down?

Besides, when the plants were growing in the cracks in my driveway, guess what the bunnies’ favourite outdoor snacks were? That’s right – CRACK SALAD!

Continue reading
« Older posts Newer posts »

Mission

My mission is to spread appreciation for ecological resilience and encourage you to live a little closer to the land. I want people to take actions that increase the beauty, biodiversity, and climate-change readiness of our towns, cities, and regions. That begins with people who own property, but includes anyone who can just go forth and do something at hand, from planting a public space to persuading a company to create green space. 

Image credits

© myself, unless credited otherwise; all rights reserved. View my available photography  on Unsplash.

Contact

Reach me by using the Comment form under the About BCLH menu. During seasonal work, my details are available by pop-up.

If you’re printing any of this blog…

…I highly recommend you use the Chrome browser. It just does a better job of the printed layout, and you’ll save paper.

© 2026 Big City, Little Homestead

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑