dense population plus birdwatching: welcoming birds without welcoming rats

[jadelennox]

This is a question for specifically other urban folks living in areas with increased rat presence in recent years. The answers to these questions are very different if you're not in an urban area.

I asked some audobon people and they were so flummoxed by the notion of city folks having specific bird watching needs. (It was almost funny but in retrospect it probably comes back to historical racism and outdoorsiness, doesn't it? Ugh.)

(For non-urban folks, whether or not you personally think rats are demonized is unfortunately irrelevant in urban areas. A large rat presence means people put out poison, poisoned rats get eaten by raptors, and then the raptors die from the rat poison. It's pretty bad. Rats caused some astronomically expensive property damage for me last winter, but that's almost incidental to the larger "poison" problem.)

Over the past few years, I've been making my home a lot more bird friendly. But I live in a city with an increased rat presence, so how to avoid being more rat friendly?

• I still have feeders out, but I keep wildlife cams with night cameras trained underneath them so I know if the rats have found them. So far, they haven't, because the feeders are far away from the nearby dumpsters. (Mice have found them, but mice aren't the problem here.)
• I know they burrow in the compost pile, and I can't figure out what to do about that. By which I mean, I know exactly what to do about that (stop composting) but I can't bear to do it. Yet.
• All the bird-friendly garden suggestions are extremely rat friendly. I have lots of tall, seed bearing native plants, which provide shelter, hiding spaces, and food for birds, insects, and rats. Pest control people basically want no seeds, and no plants over an inch or two. Aiyee, from a bird perspective.
• At one point I had some wood and brush piles which audobon suggests to provide shelter for birds and their prey, but it had to go, because whoops, they also covered rat tunnels.
• Also pest control people don't want you to have any outdoor water sources, like puddles or bird baths.

For now I'm relying on a wildlife cam, my Planned Rodentood (a rat contraceptive station, which they mostly ignore), and regular tunneling inspections all around the building. Crossed fingers that will be enough, for now.

So, if you're urban, and you live in a place with a high rat population, how do you make the place bird friendly but not rat friendly?

I have so many birds and I love it, and I really don't want them to stop seeing my home as friendly to them, but I need to manage the other problem and it's rough.

Comments

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>the rats chewed through cinder blocks and destroyed my garage. They and the squirrels between them have gnawed holes in all the rat-proof dumpsters in the apartment block next door.<<

O ... kay. O_O Rats chewing through concrete and metal is new to me.

I looked for something more robust and found that some people are using electricity to deter or kill rats.

This version lies flat on the ground and can be configured in any layout using the metal tiles.
https://www.thegridguard.com/about-rat-repellent

You'd need a taller fence for rats than mice, but the hardware cloth is a good idea.
https://www.farmshow.com/a_article.php?aid=33015

https://a-z-animals.com/reviews/5-things-that-kill-rats-instantly/


If you have plenty of money, I suppose you could always try loading for bear ...

https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=livingwithbears.bearcontainers

https://bearsaver.com/collections/bear-resistant-food-storage-lockers

https://kodiak-products.com/

https://bearguardian.com/


I'm sorry the problem is so bad in your area. That really sucks.