Suet attracts many kinds of birds. Unfortunately, squirrels often also find suet attractive and they can dominate the feeder, keeping the birds you want to see away. One solution to this problem is to use a suet that contains hot pepper.
The idea behind using hot pepper is that mammals, like squirrels, dislike the hot taste and avoid it, but birds show no response and continue to eat the pepper-laced suet. It works well, but why?
Excellent explanation here.
Birds lack the hot response, but there is some evidence that some birds are very attracted to the taste. This is to the pepper plant’s advantage. The red of the chili pepper serves as a warning to mammals—“Don’t eat me; you won’t like it.” But the red color is attractive to birds. From the plant’s point of view, if a mammal, like a squirrel, were to eat the pepper which contains the seeds, it would use its molars to grind the seeds. This might be nutritious for the squirrel, but it destroys the progeny —the seeds — of the plant. On the other hand, birds will swallow the seeds whole and disperse them in their droppings. However, the situation is even more complex than this.
Seeds of many plants are subject to being eaten by animals or attacked by pathogens, such as fungi once they are released and on the ground awaiting germination. For pepper plants, there is a bigger advantage than simple dispersal of seeds by birds. As it turns out, seeds of chili peppers that pass through the digestive system of a bird germinate at a rate of 370% higher than seeds that do not pass through a bird’s digestive system. Part of the reason for this is that these seeds are also much more resistant to fungal infections because of protections added by the bird’s digestive system. So, deliberately attracting birds to come and eat the seeds greatly benefits the plant.
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