JuneOntario's blog: TREE RATS

Posted on Feb 26, 2015 9:06 AM

If you feed the birds, or even if you don’t, the chances are that you have tree squirrels in your yard. Many gardeners, who plant small bulbs only to have them dug up and eaten, curse at the mention of squirrels and refer to them as tree rats. Bird-lovers fume when the food they provide for the birds is consumed by the rodents. However, when you eventually have time to sit and watch the goings-on in your garden, you may come to appreciate squirrels as entertainment.

Two types of squirrels frequent my garden. The largest is the eastern gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis. Here in south-central Ontario this squirrel’s fur is most commonly black or very dark brown, but it can also be silvery gray mixed with orange.

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Some startling combinations can arise, with ears or tails of different colors. I have seen a silver squirrel with bright orange ears, a black squirrel with a brown tail, a brown squirrel with an orange tail, and so on. Other color combinations, and populations of pure white squirrels, occur in other parts of North America east of the Rockies.

The red squirrel, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, is also common in my garden. More rust than red-colored, it is tiny compared to the eastern gray, but what the red lacks in size it makes up for in speed and spunk. A red can run rings around a gray, and rarely backs down from one. With comparatively large eyes and an appealing white tummy, the red squirrel can look very cute, but I would not want to get too close to its teeth.


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Of the two squirrels, the gray is the most enterprising and athletic when it comes to raiding the bird feeders. One year, a gray succeeded in reaching a feeder hung from the washing line. It climbed the wooden siding of the house, clung to the washing line and walked it upside down, and slid down onto the bird feeder, where it held on by its back feet while using its front paws to extract bird food, which it ate while hanging head-downwards.


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This year, a gray is testing my DH’s patience by accessing a pole-mounted bird feeder, which has a baffle to prevent squirrels from climbing the pole. The squirrel is leaping onto the feeder from a nearby tree. DH keeps cutting off tree branches, and the squirrel keeps finding new ones to leap from. It is now using a high, thin branch that bends down under its weight, and when the branch rebounds upward the added push extends the squirrel’s leap so it can reach the feeder once again. By spring, DH will have removed half the tree, one branch at a time.

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squirrels by LysmachiaMoon Mar 1, 2015 7:00 AM 2

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