squirrels are quite fond of safflower seeds - I use a flat feeder for birds that don’t like to perch, and the squirrels love the safflower I put in it for the cardinals.
this is, to-date, a totally squirrel proof feeder:
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Interesting point, I wonder how long it takes for the suet cakes to go rancid?
If I put them in the backyard they last about 3 days.
In the front, only a day and a half.
This is what I found and didn’t see a recipe for seed cakes. Not sure if this is what you were preferring to @greygarious?
Looks like it. I’ve never made suet cakes, just remember seeing the show where she did it.
Suet cakes are made with rendered suet, not raw. It’s the raw suet that spoils in warm weather.
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The lone bird feeder has opened my yard to a menagerie of critters (or maybe I’m just paying more attention). The cardinals seem ok with my new feeder, though they don’t care much for my janky temporary set up. I ordered a shepeherd’s hook that is yet to come, so I made a temporary holder by binding a plastic stick to an old discarded ski pole. I weighted one end with a few rocks so it won’t flip over and so far it’s with stood the weight of cardinals, sparrows and a few starling and mourning doves. Since they are scattering seeds and seed shells on the ground, it’s also bringing in chipmunks.
Squirrels are just staring at it, trying to figure it out. Birds, bunnies, chipmunks seem to be gathering around it for food. I don’t know if the bunnies eat anything, but there are a few berries in the mix (and I threw in a few small blueberries I didn’t want).
Though they will alight on raised feeders if there’s no other choice, cardinals are by nature ground feeders, like juncoes and mourning doves. A raised, flat platform feeder is a good compromise. Cardinals feel safe using it and there’s less on the ground to attract rodents.
The squirrels WILL find a way to defeat you! There’s a whole genre of entertaining YouTube videos about squirrels and bird feeders. I hold a particular karma grudge about the hundreds of dollars of (pre-Brome) seed waste and feeder damage, not to mention the red squirrel that buzz-sawed my screened porch, because as a kid, on two different occasions, I personally rescued, hand-raised, and returned to the wild an infant squirrel so young that his eyes weren’t yet open.
My house has woods on two sides, so I routinely lob cores and wilted produce beyond the tree line for the bunnies and whatever other critters will eat it.
By the way, the 24/7 Cornell feeder cam stream provides a closeup view of their platform feeder, suet feeder, and several adjacent hanging feeders.
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Yes, I do see the cardinals hopping on the ground a lot. I actually put a few seeds in a dish on the ground right next to the feeder (which is below the tree they prefer to hang out in, and where their little baby lives), and when I checked on it a few hours later, no seeds taken but that thing was crawling with ants. 
It’s also right next to a little space in my fence where the chipmunk likes to come in. I think the chipmunk will likely clean out the seeds on the ground before the cardinals do. We’ll see if I find a good compromise.
My recent HO posts melded into a dad joke: Q: Cookies are the favorite food of what birds? A: Orioles.
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My feeder is a hit. I bought a much shorter shepherd’s hook since I’m short and didn’t want to be reaching for step ladder each time I needed to clean or refill. It still brings the birds (and the chipmunks, and the squirrels, and the ants…). Look at this handsome dude!
So far his wife/girlfriend/annual fling (I don’t judge) has also stopped by, as well as his kid (might be more than one, but they kind of all look at the same when they’re young). So follow up question - do you just leave the mess of seed shells on your lawn? I know it’s all natural anyway, but just looks messy.
There’s a compound in sunflower shells which kills grass, if that matters to you. I feed sunflower hearts/chips instead. I don’t care about lawn, but all feeder birds love the shelled sunflower. Some of the tiny ones can’t open the shells. It’s pricey, but considering shell weight, not really that much more per pound. Very little gets spilled or tossed to the ground, so hearts/chips don’t attract mice. The mesh on the pictured feeder is too large for hearts/chips. If you don’t want them, buy black oil sunflower seeds rather than striped. Black oil is small enough for some of the smaller bird species.
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My current batch is a blend of seeds, and it does seem the majority is black oil sunflower rather than the usual striped sun flower seeds. So hopefully the lawn won’t get too ugly. I’m not one those who obsess over my lawn anyway; it’s already patchy and an eyesore. 
You are wise to say “to date” - I had the same feeder on a window and found a gray squirrel in it, apparently having approached it from either the roof above or by leaping from a lilac shrub several feet away.
We don’t, because of bears and predator birds.
I once had a seed feeder that I would run on a reel clothesline from the second story balcony to an aspen tree about 20 feet away. The feeder was suspended midway to keep the squirrels out. One night, around midnight, I heard a racket outside. A black bear was climbing up the tree to where the other end was attached and was PULLING the clothesline, hand over hand, with the feeder towards her/him. It grabbed the plastic feeder, crunch, it shattered and bear came down to gather what was left. I couldn’t believe it. It must have been watching me filling that feeder at some time. The aspen tree still has the bruin’s claw marks 22 years later and I am very aware of what might be in the woods when I go out there.
We have owls, crows and falcons that prey on the smaller birds and their nest contents. We do have a hummer feeder, though it high up so bear can’t get to it.
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We have only a hummingbird feeder (sugar water) hanging from our patio cover but we now have two hummingbird nests, two wren nests and a dove nest in various parts of our eves. Lots of baby birds over the past couple of years. The hummingbirds are so ‘friendly’ that they will hover just a few feet from our faces for a few seconds when we’re outside. Pretty cool.
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That always freaks me out! Like giant bees! I start looking at what I have on, thinking maybe they think I’m a flower.
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When ‘The Jetson’s’ came out, and I was just a kid, I thought the sound effect of their aerocar sounded like the hummers I’d heard buzzing around. We had a cat that could catch humming birds. She would soft mouth them and it was catch and release for her. They’re so interesting to watch. We mostly see the rufous, calliope and the black chinned ones here in northwestern Montana.
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at previous property, we had trees spaced nicely apart.
put in some eye-hooks, used 14 gauge bare copper wire, to suspend bird feeders 10-15 feet out from the tree trunks.
neat idea - but the squirrels would wire-walk the copper, then scoot down the hang wire, and feast . . .
I have a ‘cone’ arrangement on a ‘shepherd hook’ hanger that actually works quite well - except the ‘cone’ tends to slip down the hanger ‘vertical’ which allows them to ‘leapt’ past the cone baffle… need to devise a way to keep the cone baffle at its proper ‘height’ . . .
not a difficult thing, just need to ‘do it’
Sweet and attractive to them.
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We have a finch feeder, filled with nyjer seed , that DH keeps filled. Random other small birds use it too. The doves eat it off the ground. I was just told, to my horror, that roaches run around under it at night gobbling up stuff. So I need to run out there with a strainer full of food grade DE to thoroughly dust, which will kill the roaches and provide an antiparasitic effect to the doves, I hope.
We also have a bunch of hummingbird feeders, and had one raise a baby in a nest on a wind chime out the kitchen window. Watching her build the nest was incredible.
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