Squirrels Won't Touch Your Bird Feeder When You Hang It In One Ideal Spot

If squirrels are common where you live and you have a bird feeder in your garden, chances are these bushy-tailed bandits are helping themselves to the food you've left out for your avian friends. It's a common backyard battle — one that leaves many bird lovers frustrated as squirrels outsmart feeder after feeder. So how do you stop them tucking into the nuts and seeds meant for the backyard birds you want in your yard?

It turns out there's an ideal spot for hanging a bird feeder that even the wiliest and most agile of squirrels can't get to. And the good news is you don't need any fancy gear or gadgets. The key is in the placement, and you can work it out with a simple guideline known as the 5-7-9 rule. In a nutshell (pun very much intended), this means placing your bird feeder at least 5 feet off the ground, 7 feet away from other structures, and with 9 feet of clear space above it. Given squirrels' uncanny acrobatic abilities, this approach gives you the best shot at keeping their thieving little paws at bay.

Let's break down the 5-7-9 rule to see if it'll work in your garden. The key is making sure you have enough space to put this squirrel-deterrent hack into action. When it comes to jumping, squirrels blow Olympic gold medalists out of the water. They can jump 5 feet straight up from the ground, leap 7 feet horizontally (such as from one branch to the next), and safely drop from as high as 9 feet onto their target. In this case, your bird feeder.

To put the 5-7-9 rule into practice, take a look at your garden's layout. Are there overhanging branches, nearby rooftops, or fence lines squirrels could use as springboards? Squirrels are clever and often follow the same routes — like climbing a tree, then leaping from a branch — so it's worth observing where they're coming from. Once you understand their access points, you can position your feeder more strategically. 

Choosing an open, uncluttered spot not only helps keep squirrels at bay but also gives visiting birds a safer space to feed. With a bit of planning and reorganizing, you can make your garden more inviting to birds without giving the uninvited critters an all-you-can-eat buffet. However, if your garden isn't big enough to tick all those boxes, you'll need to adapt the rule to keep squirrels away from your bird feeder.

Maybe you've got a small yard, or your space is full of trees and structures that double as a squirrel-sized parkour playground. If your garden layout makes it tough to follow the 5-7-9 rule to the letter, you're not out of luck. With a few creative tweaks, you can still keep these opportunists from turning your feeder into their personal snack bar.

One option is to use a tall, freestanding feeder pole placed as far from trees, fences, or other structures as possible. You will need to add a squirrel baffle to the pole to block the squirrels from climbing up, which you can DIY with a Dollar Tree kitchen bowl. Another clever workaround is suspending your feeder from a sturdy, thin, and flexible wire strung between two distant points — like trees, posts, or walls. As long as the feeder hangs at least 5 feet off the ground and is far from the nearest jump-off spot, squirrels will have a hard time reaching it as this type of wire is especially tricky for them to walk across.

These options won't create a perfect 5-7-9 setup, but they can mimic the same squirrel-thwarting effect. Even simple tricks — like switching up your feeder's location now and then or using a slinky as a baffle — can help throw squirrels off their game. It might also be worth changing the bird seed to something squirrels don't like, such as safflower seed. By employing variations on the rule, you can still stack the odds in favor of your feathered visitors.