Adventures with suet

This piece originally ran as a StarTribune Home and Garden column in 2004

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Suet feeders

I have paid good money for a lot of birding paraphernalia, but never, ever have I purchased a suet feeder.

Suet feeders are not something you find in Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks, right? I have felt from Day One that I always could build a better suet feeder.

My progress toward this goal was inhibited for several years by events beyond my control. The first problem was bears. The years we lived in the woods we had both massive bear problems and massive-bear problems.

One of the reasons the bears were so big was they ate our suet. As best I could tell, they ate the feeders, too. We would hang them, fill them, and never see them again.

We moved back to The Cities. We fenced part of the yard for the dog. This left me with suet opportunity. Favoring the complex over the simple, I built a large suet basket of wood and hardware cloth, fastened a pulley to a high stout limb on our willow tree, and hung the basket from a rope. I could lower the basket to be filled, then raise it high to please the woodpeckers. What I wanted was elevation.

The basket swayed in the breeze. Sometimes it swung in the wind. For those of you who wish to keep woodpeckers from bothering your house, this feeder design comes highly recommended. It swung there for a year, woodpeckerless. Suet lasts forever, so I kept hoping. But eventually we had cadaverous suet and no hope, so I took it down.

Our dog, sadly, no longer was with us. That did, however, open additional and better suet territory. I went to work.

Suet, in case you do not know, comes from cows. It once was a byproduct of cutting meat. Suet was there, attached to certain parts of the animal. The cow being dead, suet's only purpose was goodwill. You went into the meat market to see the man smiling at you over the display case, happy to serve you in his little white cap and his big white apron. "Do you have any suet today?" you asked.

"Just a minute, sir, while I check the cooler," he would say, returning, smiling even more, to wrap your suet in white butcher paper, marking it in black crayon with a big NC – no charge. Free suet.

"Right!" said the butchers. Now we pay a buck forty-nine a pound for suet shrink-wrapped in plastic that would stop a bullet.

Anyway, you want a suet feeder that is attractive to its intended audience, simple to fill, deters predators, and does not cost much, if anything at all. Actually, it is not hard to imagine da Vinci working on this.

My feeders have gone through several design changes. I introduce new models at a pace that would frighten Detroit. The latest has as its base a 2x8 cedar board 30 inches long. Half-inch hardware cloth forms the basket. (Check the photo.)

Key to this new and improved design is a series of three-inch-square openings cut from the hardware cloth, one on each side, one or two in the front. This allows the birds to get at the suet without having to peck through the half-inch wire mesh. It does make a difference. The bill marks in the suet are concentrated in those open areas.

I attach the rig to a large tree with screws. I have three suet feeders in place now, two six feet off the ground, one 15 feet high. The higher feeder is much preferred by woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches and the Brown Creeper that HAVE BEEN FEEDING here this winter. The higher feeder particularly is favored by Pileated Woodpeckers.

It does take an extension ladder to fill it, that's true, but it doesn't move when the wind blows, and it was free if you don't count the cost of material. Now, I need to make good friends with a butcher or two, someone who will slip me a little suet on the side. The pun is intended.

It does take an extension ladder to fill it, that's true, but it doesn't move when the wind blows, and it was free if you don't count the cost of material. The best part, though, is the visits by the Pileateds. They trumpet as they arrive in the yard. I'd even pay for that.