It’s taking some squirrels time to figure it out and some still haven’t. Some are afraid of the lid snapping shut the first time they realize the lever action. It doesn’t hurt them, the noise and sudden movement startles them. I did have to tape the bottom lever down for a couple days so my squirrels didn’t go hungry and then taped it loosely so they had to raise it the rest of the way - some are not as bright as others. As far as the bottom flap, there is a flaw, as I took note of the previous person’s review before hanging mine. You don’t, however, have to take it apart to fix it. The pressure of the nuts and bolts seem to make the corners squeeze slightly on the end of the flap. We just pushed the flap down - before mounting - filed/sanded each side of the flap ever so slightly until it moved up and down with ease and they work great!!! So Duncraft, awesome product, design, idea, etc., just need to tweak the flap mechanism…

While this is a great concept, which provides us with endless hours of amusement watching our backyard denizens, it suffers from a flaw whereby the lid doesn't close. Eventually I will take it apart and plane down the perch which is causing the problem (too wide), but it's annoying to have to disassemble the whole feeder to have to fix it.