I think the chickadees, titmice and downies have had a bumper crop this year! I've never seen (or heard) so many dee-dee-dee's before, it's so fun! So far I've only seen one young red-bellied but they maybe only bringing one at a time to the feeder. And just one young cardinal - which really is not a bad thing, I can only imagine what it will be like if all 70 cardinals from last winter bring all there babies to the feeders - I'll have to take out a loan for birdseed. I've also seen house wren, phoebe and catbird fledglings. This evening I was following a spread-wing damselfly through the woods and I heard a bobwhite! We haven't had any in several years so I was really thrilled to hear it. I thought about trying to track it down but the mosquitos were eating me up alive! And the buck was stomping and snorting at me since I was standing in his bed :^)

It is a stripmall so I am assuming the rental agency put it up. You would need a ladder to get up to remove it and it probably is set up in sections of 100 ft. I called the Wild Bird Centre and they say since they aren't protected species as they are probably sparrows there is nothing they can do and could be looked upon as vandalism is anyone else attempts to remove it. Plus I am 8 months pregnant and not really up to climbing the ladder right now plus my phobia of heights - a bad combo. I am telling myself "that's just the way it is, I guess".

I will try to give you a few ideas; maybe some arrows in your quiver. One thing you may not be aware of in regard to rental property is that many/most landlords have management companies that find tenants and manage the rentals for the landlords. They usually take around 10% of the rent and often the first month rent. This sounds like a lot of money, but to the management company, it is a pretty skinny margin. From the landlord's perspective, most management companies do a poor job of screening tenants and managing the tenants. In my experience, the poor experience you are having with your neighbors is probably mirrored in the owner's books. Many of these management relationships do not align the interests of the landlord with the management company. Try to open a dialogue or line of communication with the owner and the management company. Reach out to them, exchange numbers and tell them you just want to know who they are and who to contact in case their property is being mistreated or abused. Owners will not want to hear about loud parties, but you can contact the management company and complain. You can ask questions about their screening process. Honestly, hard core credit checks and references weed out most problems. Just gently put remind them that what they do or fail to do affects your life and that you are a real person that has to deal with the consequences of their procedures and screening. Don't be over the top, just in the background and helping to protect the property and real person that has to deal with their tenants. Many of these landlords and management companies have no idea what is really going on with the tenants. Secondly, put together an informal HOA. You do not need legal authority and fees to make one work. In fact, having money and authority creates all sorts of problems and responsibility. Just get a few like minded neighbors together and have a meeting once a quarter on someone's front porch. You can exchange contact information and start communicating. Give yourself a name. Some neighbors will show up and you will meet some like minded people. Set up a google group to communicate. After your first meeting, put together a flyer and drop it off on every front porch or doorstep in the neighborhood. This will put everyone on notice that the community is organized. You can take this far as you want: Elect officers, put out regular flyers or organize neighborhood cookouts. The important part is to let the neighborhood know you are organized, give officers in the organization some backing to approach the city council, police, crime watch, management companies and landlords. You would be surprised how many of your neighbors feel the same way and the organization will help you get things done. The last suggestion is less social and civic, but it is very effective. One word, VIDEO. Most of the behavior you describe is not the sort of thing people want on video. People really clean up their act when they are worried about being recorded. You can set up a simple door bell cam that streams video to the cloud via WiFi and your mobile phone for around $200.00. I think the recurring charge is $5.00 per camera per month. The newer models are HD quality, have wide fields of vision and infrared up to 25 or 30 feet. This is very simple and very good quality. You can also step up to multi camera system with a base station that wirelessly connects to multiple cameras. These can be little harder to configure, you can find them at Costco or Sam's Club in the $200 to $350 range. Lastly, you can buy a full blown HD surveillance system with recording and 4 to 16 cameras for $400 to $2000, from Costco or Sam's club. These are great, but they require coax wiring to be installed and this can be expensive. There are some that use Wifi, but you still have to get power to the cameras and that is problematic as well. You can find something that will get a camera on what concerns you and it will have an impact. Make it conspicuous too. Those are the big ones. I hope you find something in there that you can try in your neighborhood. It honestly sounds like you have a great spot and I think there are some steps you can take to that should have a positive impact and while providing some feedback that you are making some progress and having an impact. Best of Luck ~Justin

Make the railings around the edges of the platforms solid from top to bottom and you might have fewer seeds going over the sides and onto the ground. My squirrels would move in A friend had a renter feeding birds with a platform feeder. Whenever I visited I saw a carpet of ejected seed on the ground beneath it. After the resulting rat effects were discovered under the house the contractor engaged to deal with them charged $7000. A little less than a pest and insulation company just charged me to replace rat soiled insulation and ground cloth, plug rat holes in two attics and one crawl space. The existing yellow insulation pulled out and bagged up by the crew had so many turds on it it looked like raisin buns. The couple that I bought the house from last fall had been feeding birds both mixed seed and sunflower seeds by the garbage can fall using 2 platform feeders with small bases. Rats had tunneled under the foundation and been caching the sunflower seeds in the crawl space.