Omg! Just seen a rat darting in & out of a hedge in garden in broad daylight! I think it was grabbing dropped seed from a bird feeder hanging from a very large buddleja. I’ve swept up any fallen seed & removed the feeder (which I’m sad about as I love feeding the birds!)
should this do the trick or am I pretty much stuck with it now it’s arrived ? Or is there anything else I need to do to get rid? Or am I being overly worried & does it really matter... do rats get an overly bad rep?
Hello Carly-Jayne, you did the correct thing in removing the feeder for now. You can get different trays that attach under the feeders to catch overspill, have a google on the RSPB site for ideas, that way you avoid seed lying on the ground and hopefully in turn this will not attract the rats. If you have your feeder in soil, turn it over with a hoe, so that any old seed and poo is not lying in the same spot. If your feeder is on concrete, give the area a good wash. Wait a week or so and introduce maybe one feeder at a time. Good luck.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Carly-Jayne said:do rats get an overly bad rep?
Undoubtedly they do. There's not much difference in having any animal in the garden, whether fox or rat ... as long as it stays in the garden. Just my opinion, of course. That said, they can cause damage by chewing things.
Most bird feeding enthusiasts get visited every now and again. The general advice is
a) don't get overly worried.
b) remove the bird feeders temporarily and the rat will move on. Two weeks is the period typically recommended. The birds will soon come back.
c) in future, try and prevent (too much) seed getting on the ground, perhaps with trays underneath the feeders or if it is unavoidable then clean it up regularly.
Others may have different things to add
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Nige Flickr
Hi Carly, I think a lot of folk feeding birds on a regular basis will at some stage be visited by unwanted vermin and although rats do probably get an overly bad rap as you say, I doubt many would want them around their garden. The advice I can offer is unless you have more than one rat (if so then I would do as you have done and remove all feeders for a couple of weeks), I would re-position any feeding station to another area of the garden and ensure it is not too near any trees/shrubs where a rat could climb to access the feeders; you can add seed catcher trays to the bottom of your feeders to help prevent spillage falling to the ground and maybe don't put suet blocks or fat balls out for a while (as these tend to be spill more fat crumbs on to the ground ) .
I used a free standing feeder pole which had a baffle dome fitted - this was mainly to keep grey squirrels from reaching the feeders but would work equally well to stop rats too.
Main thing is to try keep the ground under your feeders clean but the seed catchers will help and move the feeding station every two to three months. I would feed whole peanuts in a dedicated feeder rather that fat/suet cake as it still gives birds a high protein content during the colder winter months.
You can see the baffle dome and free standing feeder below.
Good luck and hope you can continue to enjoy feeding your birds.
X-post with Catlady and Nige, took me so long to write this reply half an hour went by before I could post up !
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Regards, Hazel
Hello Carly-Jayne, I know how you feel, as I had a number of visits over the years since feeding birds, and I did not stop feeding my visitors, yet the rats left. I used to fill large feeders with buggy nibbles and much of it ended up on the ground, so I replaced the buggy nibbles with seeds like black sunflower and RSPB Sunflower mix with other seeds. Any seeds falling down are completely mopped up by ground feeding birds (I don't put any food on the ground other than what falls from feeders.) I also looked for, found and filled holes on the ground big enough to allow rats in and out. I filled these with stones. Very quickly any rats stopped visiting. I cannot exclude the possibility that a neighbour may have poisoned my rat visitor(s), I really hope not! I've now started feeders with a small number of fat balls (which are tougher than nibbles, and any bits falling off are eaten by ground feeding birds). I find that footballs bring in the Longtail tits and the starlings and magpies, the odd red woodpecker all of which cannot access my guarded feeders. Jury is still out whether rodents will revisit. I have a very small compost box which is not completely closed, and a few months ago I noticed a little scared mouse living in it... I stopped putting new veg on the compost to discourage proliferation, and started a Bokashi bin composting system, in addition to my indoor wormery. But I believe nothing can completely replace an outdoor compost heap... Good luck with discouraging the rats, I believe they have a bad press from ancient times, they are lovely, really!