Our backyard has an array of animals these days. Eastern gray squirrels, chipmunks, and cottontails. Northern cardinals, House wrens, black-capped chickadees, tufted titmice, American goldfinches, downy woodpeckers, blue jays, white-breasted nuthatches, and an occasional cedar waxwing.

I took a field biology class last fall that has me very interested in birds at the moment. Partly because now I can actually identify the birds that I see. My father is an avid birder and growing up I would wake up mornings to see Dad standing in front of the kitchen window with his binoculars trained on the bird feeders. Twice a year Dad would wake me up before dawn and we'd go into the park to do the annual Breeding Bird Survey in the summer and the annual Christmas Bird Count on winter solstice. I grew disinterested because I never learned to tell a wren from a warbler.

Now that I have burned into my memory the male and female feather patterns of 70+ bird species, I've been spending a lot of time watching birds. Our neighbors have a serious number of bird feeders that I can see from the living room window. In addition the tenants before us left a tube-style feeder in one of the trees in our yard. I bought some birdseed for it and couldn't resist buying a suet feeder to attract other winter birds like woodpeckers that don't come to feeders.

Little did I know that my innocent interest in watching birds would turn into a full on battle with the squirrels. First the feeder was in a tree in our yard. Once the squirrels found the feeder they devoured the entire tube of seed in two days and broke the branch the feeder was hanging from.

Next I moved the feeder to a place above our porch that the birds could get to but the squirrels couldn't. The squirrels were foiled, but so was I, since I couldn't see the birds from any of the windows. Over break I accidentally left a 20 pound bag of seed on the porch and when I came home it had been raided and scattered all over the porch.

Next try was to hang the feeders on the close line, high enough off the ground so they couldn't jump up to the feeder from the ground and far enough away from each tree to keep them from jumping out the feeder from the trunk.

This lasted less than a day before we learned that squirrels are accomplished tightrope walkers. Next we went to clear picture hanging wire, thinking that surely this would be too fine for the squirrels to walk across.

It was two days before the squirrels figured this one out. They jump out to midway on the line, then hang upside down and crawl paw over paw to the feeder, mission impossible style.

Fishing line is our next idea, though I'm not sure even this will be enough. Maybe spinning circular disks attached on either side of the line will stop them? I'll keep you updated.