In article , "Figmo"
wrote:
"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article , jammer
wrote:
Actually it isn't common that squirrels chew off branches. But what Bill
described is a "tribal" method that squirrels in some areas learn.
In my area (SF bay area) I have Douglas' Squirrels which are tree squirrels.
I find short chewed-off branches on the ground under my olives and cedars
all the time and attribute it to nest building. The squirrels were here
long before I was, and our trees have survived decades of such activity and
look great.
Douglas squirrels (& further north Red or Chickaree squirrel) prefer pine
forests to any other & the first proof of their presence is piles of cone
scales at the foot of trees. People who go into the woods to gather pine
nuts watch for evidence of Douglas or Red squirrel caches, then rob the
squirrels. Late in the year when the cones are ready to harvest, they're
nipped from the trees with a little length of stem attached, then they
descend to the ground & remove the cones from the branches & bury them.
That at least is their behavior if human presence doesn't alter their
behavior.
When they live near people (& they're just about the only squirrels
besides the much more common grey squirrels that LIKE to live near people
& do so very successfully), their behavior has to take advantage of more
kinds of trees & is less focused on pine-nuts as primary resources, but I
can easily imagine they'd continue to clip small limbs of whatever they
were harvesting & descend to bury the extra. This would ordinarily amount
to healthful pruning though. The reason so many cultivars need pruning to
be in best form is because plants even in the wild are pruned by grazing
animals, squirrels, birds, & even by stormy weather.
One of the worst things is when someone lives amidst squirrels who
harvest buds off trees. That's rare except in starvation conditions,
but once it gets started, it can be something much of a given population
of squirrels will do.
Bud-harvesting was common on my property when I first moved here, but the
poor squirrels were starving. I began feeding the squirrels and birds and
now they leave my tree buds and daffodils alone. I can't keep them out of
my azaleas, though, for some reason they find the blossoms delicious. I've
even found them carrying off blossoms to line their nests.
Not all squirrels are horders like grey, douglas, & red squirrels. Most
people live near greys only, & the large squirrels will not harvest buds
unless their horded food resources ran out in late winter & there is no
choice of food BUT buds so early in the new year. As you found out, if
better food resources are provided to them in late winter/early spring,
red, douglas, or greys don't want buds. But flying squirrels live in a
tighter hunting range, & take advantage of less high-fat food resources
than do grey squirrels, & for them tree buds are predictably a normal part
of their late winter diet. Hardly anyone ever blames them because people
don't even realize they have tree squirrels about. They are in some cities
THE most common mammal & far outnumber grey squirrels or racoons or
possums or any other mammal that has adapted to city life, but flying
squirrels are so profoundly nocturnal & shy, only the city workers who
clip tree limbs out of telephone wires know how common they are.
Interesting your Douglas squirrels will eat azalea blossoms. Deciduous
azaleas may I ask? It's not a harvesting choice I knew about, but the
western deciduous azalea is extremely redolent, its sweetness can be
smelled twenty feet away, & I can imagine squirrels taking a liking to
them. It strikes me, though, like one of those "regional" learned habits
that might not carry through to populations in other areas.
BTW, for the original poster, the German word for squirrel (Eichhörnchen)
means "oak kitten."
I always translated it "acorn kitty." I used to give English instruction
to Japanese folks, who cannot say "squirrel." Another word many Japanese
people have trouble saying is "cat" which always comes out "Kato," as
there are no words in Japanese that end in T. But squirrel is much more
extreme, as ot has three sounds in it that have no parallel enunciation in
Japanese -- no Japanese words with the "skw" "irr" OR a concluding "el",
so that one little word is like their worst tongue-twister, but since this
was on the U.W. campus which is just crawling with semi-tame grey
squirrels, it was a word everyone had need one. So one of the lessons
focused on a word they would never be able to say even close enough for a
hearer to figure it out, & after some few moments of frustration & not
even coming close with "squirrel" I'd suggest "acorn kitty" which was easy
to say.
(Which reminds me, the only syllable in the name Edgar Allan Poe
pronouncable in Japanese is "Poe". Japanese pronounce the name
Edo-gawa-rampo, & the classic Japanese author Edogawa Rampo really
believed he had taken Poe's name as his own pseudonym for Japanese
publication.)
-paghat
- Figmo
--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl:
http://www.paghat.com/