Part 23

This squirrel shows a strong preference for coniferous forests, whether of hemlock, spruce, fir, or pine, but may be common in woods where conifers are few and widely scattered. Although usually diurnal and busily occupied from sunrise until sunset, it sometimes continues its activities during moonlight nights, especially when nuts are ripe and it is time to gather winter stores. During warm, pleasant days in spring and fall, when the nights are cool, it often lies at full length along the tops of large branches during the middle of the day, basking in the grateful warmth of the sun.

The nests, which are located in a variety of situations, are made of twigs, leaves, or moss, and lined with fibrous bark and other soft material. Some are in knot-holes or other hollows in trees, others may be built outside on limbs near the trunk, and still others are in burrows made in the ground under roots, stumps, logs, brush heaps, or other cover offering secure refuge. Apparently several litters, of young, containing from four to six, are born each season, as they have been found from April to September.

They do not hibernate, but are active throughout the year, except during some of the coldest and most inclement weather. To provide against the season of scarcity, they accumulate at the base of a tree, under the shelter of a log, or other cover, great stores of pine, spruce, or other cones, sometimes in heaps containing from six to ten bushels. They also hide scattered cones here and there and place stores of beechnuts, corn, and other seeds in hollows or underground store-rooms. They are fond of edible mushrooms and sometimes lay up half a bushel of them among the branches of trees or bushes to dry for winter use. In the western mountains their great stores of pine cones are often robbed by seed-gatherers for forestry nurseries. In winter they tunnel through the snow to their hidden stores and sometimes continue the tunnels from one store to another.

Each squirrel makes its home for a long period in or about a certain tree. There he carries his cones to extract the seeds, and on the ground beneath it the accumulation of fallen scales and centers of cones sometimes amounts to fifteen or twenty bushels. In addition to the seeds of the various conifers, red squirrels eat many kinds of fruits and seeds; they also raid cornfields and orchards and even make nests in barns and woodsheds to be near the food supply which some farmer’s industry has collected.

Red squirrels have the interesting habit of voluntarily swimming streams and lakes, including such bodies of water as Lake George and even the broadest parts of Lake Champlain. When they thus cross the water and make their migrations, there is little doubt that they are usually in search of a better feeding ground.

The red squirrels and related species have the greatest variety of notes possessed by any of the American members of the squirrel family. In addition to the barking, scolding, chattering notes already mentioned, they have a real song, which is one of the most attractive of woodland notes. It is a long-drawn series of musical rolling or churring notes, varied at times by cadences and having a ventriloquial quality rendering it difficult to locate. These notes never fail to awaken pleasurable emotions and to recall to me my early boyhood in the Adirondacks, where the spring songs of the chickarees were among the first calls which awakened me to the marvelous beauties of nature.

The worst trait of the red squirrel and one which largely overbalances all his many attractive qualities is his thoroughly proved habit of eating the eggs and young of small birds. During the breeding season he spends a large part of his time in predatory nest hunting, and the number of useful and beautiful birds he thus destroys must be almost incalculable. The number of red squirrels is very great over a continental area, and one close observer believes each squirrel destroys 200 birds a season. Practically all species of northern warblers, vireos, thrushes, chickadees, nuthatches, and others are numbered among their victims. The notable scarcity of birds in northern forests may be largely due to these handsome but vicious marauders.

In the fur country these squirrels are much disliked by the trappers for their constant interference with meat-baited traps. Many fall victims to their carnivorous desires, but their places are soon taken by others.

The energy and unfailing variety in the performances of red squirrels always keep the attention of their human neighbors. Among other interesting activities, their pursuit of one another up and down and around the trunks of trees, over the ground, along logs, back and forth in the most reckless abandon, is most entertaining to watch. These pursuits among the young are playful and harmless, but among the males in spring are of the most deadly character. I have seen the victim go up and down tree after tree, shrieking in fear and agony and leaving a trail of blood on the snow as he tried to escape his truculent pursuer.

Such scenes as this, combined with our knowledge of its bird-killing habits, appear belied by the exquisite grace and beauty of this squirrel as it sits on a branch and sends its musical cadences trilling through the primeval forest. So confirmed are red squirrels in the destruction of bird life, however, they should not be permitted to become very numerous anywhere and it may eventually become necessary to outlaw them wherever found.

=THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus douglasi= and its relatives)

(_For illustration, see page 546_)

In all details of size, form, notes, and habits the Douglas squirrel gives testimony to its descent from the same ancestral stock as the common red squirrel (_Sciurus hudsonicus_). The typical Douglas squirrel, represented in the accompanying illustration, is one of several geographic races of a species which ranges from the Cascades and Sierra Nevada to the Pacific, and from British Columbia south to the San Pedro Martir Mountains of Lower California. The home of the Douglas squirrel is amid the wonderful coniferous forests of western Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia. As in other mammals of this extremely humid region, the colors of its upperparts are dark brown, in strong contrast to the much paler and grayer colors of the closely related subspecies living in the clearer and more arid climate of the Sierra Nevada in California. These squirrels are known locally by a variety of common names, including pine squirrel, redwood squirrel, and “drummer.”

Although usually not quite so noisy and self-assertive as the irrepressible little red blusterer of eastern forests, the Douglas squirrel is also notable for its rollicking, chattering character and sometimes cannot be outdone in its amusing displays of aggressive impudence. When the animals are numerous the air at times resounds with their call notes or songs, one answering the other, now near and now far, until the somber depths of the mighty forest seems peopled with a multitude of these joyous furry sprites. Their song, resembling that of the red squirrel, is a rapid trilling or bubbling series of notes, long drawn out and sometimes varied by cadences. It is so musical that it seems more like the song of some strange bird than of a mammal. When these squirrels are not common they are much less given to song and seem subdued and shy, as though impressed by the vast loneliness of their deep forest haunts.

At mating time, early in spring, they are especially noisy, and again in summer when the first litter of young are out trying their youthful pipes in expression of their cheerful well being. They frequently come down on a low branch or on the trunk of a tree and chatter, bark, and scold at man, dog, or other intruder, now rushing up and down, or making little dashes around the tree trunk, their necks outstretched and tails flirting with a great show of anger and contempt highly entertaining to see. They are restlessly active at all seasons of the year and habitually chase one another through the forest with an appearance of rollicking fun which may many times be in more deadly earnest than appears to the casual observer.

In winter their tracks in the snow lead from tree to tree, along the tops of logs and fences, and in all directions to hidden stores of food, which they appear to be able to locate with unerring certainty under the snow. An adventurous spirit leads them to race away from the forest, along fence-tops, to pay visits to ranch buildings and even to villages and small towns. Like their eastern relative, the Douglas squirrels are omnivorous, feeding on the seeds of all the conifers in their range, including spruces, firs, pines, and redwoods, and also upon acorns, and a great variety of other seeds, fruits, and mushrooms, insects, birds’ eggs, young birds, and any other meat they can find. Owing to their habit of interfering with meat-baited traps, they are a nuisance to trappers. They frequently visit orchards and carry off apples and pears, from which they extract the seeds. They have been seen also to visit the wounds made on a willow trunk by sapsuckers to drink the flowing sap. Their feet and the fur about their mouths are often much gummed with pitch from working on pine cones.

In many places the soft, moist earth in the woods is riddled with little pits dug by these squirrels apparently when they are after larvæ or perhaps edible roots. Throughout the summer, but especially during the last half of the season, and in autumn Douglas squirrels work with persistent energy to amass great stores of seed-bearing cones, which they heap, sometimes bushels of them, about the bases of trees, stumps, and the upturned roots of fallen trees or under other shelter. Cones are also buried here and there in the loose leaves and humus. In winter many holes in the snow with piles of cone scales at the entrances show where the owners have dug down to their stores.

Some of their nests are constructed in hollow trees, many others on branches near their junction with the trunks, and still others in underground dens under roots, logs, or stumps. In winter when alarmed these squirrels sometimes race down the tree trunks and take refuge in holes leading through the snow to their food caches and underground burrows. The nests built in tree-tops are usually rather bulky, measuring a foot or more in diameter, and are made of small twigs, dry leaves, moss, grass, and fibrous bark. They are commonly lined with such soft material as feathers and fur. The young, numbering three to seven at a litter, are born at any time between April and October.

The extraordinary intelligence and sense of prevision possessed by squirrels of this group is well illustrated by certain local food migrations. These have been observed in eastern Oregon in years when the cone crop has failed and nothing was available to lay up for winter. Under such conditions to remain in the mountain forests would mean death by starvation before winter had fairly begun. In 1910 and 1913 failure of the cone crop occurred in eastern Oregon and these squirrels promptly left the mountain forests in September and descended along creek courses to the open sagebrush plains as much as seven or more miles from the border of their ordinary haunts. In this open country they wintered successfully, raiding the farmers’ grain bins, root cellars, and other stores, and otherwise showing their supreme fitness to survive in the struggle for existence. With the coming again of summer they promptly returned to their abandoned homes in the pines. It appears to be one of the marvels of animal intelligence that under such circumstances as those named above the entire body of the squirrels on the mountains should have known what to do, especially as a great percentage of their number could never have had any previous experience as a guide.

=THE GRAY SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus carolinensis= and its relatives)

(_For illustration, see page 547_)

The gray squirrel is so well known to everyone in the Eastern States that it scarcely needs an introduction. Many who have not seen it in its native haunts are familiar with it as a graceful and charming resident of parks in many cities. It is about twice as large as the red squirrel and intermediate in size between that species and the fox squirrel. Although sharing some of the range of both the species named, the color of the gray squirrel at once distinguishes it.

The gray squirrel is a North American species with no near relative in the Old World; on the Pacific coast, in the mountains of the Southwest, and in Mexico are other squirrels having much the same gray-colored body, but with no close relationship to it. Its range covers the deciduous forests of the Eastern States and southern Canada from Nova Scotia to Florida, and westward to the border of the treeless Great Plains. Wherever they occur these squirrels are an attractive element in the woodland life, their barking and chattering, their graceful forms, and their activity adding greatly to the cheerful animation of the forest. They are far less vociferous than red squirrels, but their notes are varied and serve to express a variety of meanings.

During the early settlement of the country west of the States bordering the coast, gray squirrels existed in great numbers and often made ruinous inroads on the pioneer corn and wheat fields. In 1749 they invaded Pennsylvania in such hosts that a bounty of three pence each was put on their scalps. Eight thousand pounds sterling was paid on this account, which involved the killing of 640,000 squirrels. In 1808 a law in force in Ohio required that each free white male deliver 100 squirrel scalps a year or pay $3 in cash. Records of the ravages of these squirrels in corn fields are extant also from Kentucky, Missouri, and other States.

Enormous migrations of gray squirrels from one part of the country to another occurred in those days, caused apparently by the failure of food supplies in the deserted areas. Some impulse to move in one general direction at the same time appeared to affect the squirrels and they swarmed across country in amazing numbers, carrying devastation to any farms crossed on the way. When engaged in such movements they appeared indifferent to obstacles and without hesitation swam lakes and streams even as large as the Hudson and the Ohio. Amusing legends grew up concerning these migrations, one of which avers that when the squirrels arrived on a river bank each dragged a large chip or piece of bark into the water and mounting it raised its bushy tail in the breeze and was wafted safely to the other shore! As a fact, many were drowned in crossing large streams and others arrived exhausted from their exertions.

The gray and fox squirrels were favorite targets for pioneer marksmen. The early chronicles tell of the ability of Daniel Boone and other riflemen to “bark” a squirrel, which meant so to cut the bark of the branch on which the squirrel sat as to bring it to the ground stunned without hitting the animal. With the clearing away of the forests, the general occupation of the country, and the decrease of larger animals, gray squirrels have been deprived of most of their haunts and have become such desirable game that they have decreased to a point requiring stringent legal protection to save them from extermination.

Gray squirrels are more thoroughly arboreal than red squirrels and make their nests either in hollow trunks or build them in the tops of trees. These outside nests are common and much like a crow’s nest in appearance except that they are generally more bulky and show more dead leaves. They are built on a foundation of small sticks with a rounded top of leaves, and are lined with shreds of bark, moss, and similar soft material. In the extreme northern part of their range they live mainly in hollow trees, but farther south many winter in outside nests. During severe cold and in stormy weather they remain hidden, sometimes for days at a time.

They have two litters of four to six young a year, the first usually being born in March or April. The old squirrel is a devoted mother and if the nest is disturbed she will at once carry the young to some safer retreat.

In many parts of their range black, or melanistic, individuals are born in litters otherwise of the ordinary gray color. In some districts the number of the black squirrels equals or exceeds the gray ones.

Gray squirrels range through such a variety of climatic conditions that their food varies greatly. They eat practically all available nuts, including acorns, chestnuts, beechnuts, hickory-nuts, and pecans, besides numberless seeds, many small fruits, and mushrooms. They raid fields for corn and wheat, and steal apples, pears, and quinces from orchards to eat the seeds. Like most other small rodents, they are fond of larvæ and insects and also destroy many birds’ eggs and young birds. They are far less serious offenders, however, in destroying birds than the red squirrel.

On the approach of winter they lay up stores of seeds and nuts in holes in trees and in little hiding places on the ground. Many nuts are hidden away singly. In the public parks of Washington, where many gray squirrels exist, I have repeatedly seen them dig a little pit two or three inches deep, then push a nut well down it cover it with earth, which they press firmly in place with the front feet, and then pull loose grass over the spot. One squirrel will have many such hidden nuts, and with nothing to mark the location it appears impossible that they could be recovered. That the squirrels knew what they were doing I have had repeated evidence in winter, even with several inches of snow on the ground, when they have been seen sniffing along the top of the snow, suddenly stop, dig down and unearth a nut with a precision that demonstrates the marvelous delicacy of their sense of smell. Although mainly diurnal, they are sometimes abroad on moonlight nights, especially when gathering stores of food for winter.

Wherever they are, these squirrels are extremely graceful, moving along the ground by curving bounds, the long fluffy tail undulating as they go, or running through the tree-tops, leaping from branch to branch with an ease and certainty beautiful to see. When pressed they make amazing leaps from tree to tree or even from a high tree-top to the ground without injury. They are extremely cunning at concealing themselves by lying flat on top of branches or by gliding around tree trunks, keeping them interposed between themselves and the pursuer.

Gray squirrels are so responsive to protection that they may continue to grace our remaining forests if we properly guard them. In addition to their beauty, they are interesting game animals which should continue to afford a moderate amount of sport--sufficient to prevent them from becoming overabundant and destructive. Now introduced in many city parks throughout the United States and in parts of England, including London, their ready acceptance of people as friends renders them charming animals in such places; but natural food is so scarce under these artificial conditions that care must be taken to feed them at all seasons, especially in winter.

=THE FOX SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus niger= and its relatives)

(_For illustration, see page 547_)

THE RUSTY FOX SQUIRREL (Sciurus niger rufiventer)

(_For illustration, see page 547_)

Three species of tree squirrels inhabit the varied forests of eastern North America, each having its marked individuality expressed in color, size, and habits. All occupy a wide territory with varying climatic conditions, to which each species has responded by becoming modified into a series of geographic races, or subspecies. The red and the gray squirrels have already been described and it remains to give an account of the largest and in some respects the most remarkable of the three, the fox squirrel.

No other species of North American mammal can show such an extraordinary contrast in color among its subspecies as that between the rusty yellowish animal of the Ohio and upper Mississippi Valleys, and the handsome blackish one of the Southeastern States, both of which are pictured in the accompanying illustration.

The distribution of the fox squirrel is limited to the forested parts of the Eastern States. There it ranges from the Atlantic coast to the border of the Great Plains, and from southern New York and the upper Mississippi Valley southward to Florida, the Gulf coast, and across the lower Rio Grande into extreme northeastern Mexico.

Variations in the character of the haunts of the different subspecies of this squirrel almost equal their differences in color. In the upper Mississippi and Ohio Valleys the rusty-colored race frequents the upland woods, where the nut-bearing hickory trees characterize the forests. In the South the dark-colored squirrels have more varied homes, either amid the live oaks draped in long Spanish moss, in the mysterious cypress forests of the swamps, or out in the uplands among the southern pines.

In early days fox squirrels were plentiful, but never equaled the numbers of the gray squirrel. They appear always to have been more closely attached to their own district, for we have no records of the great migrations so notable in the other species.

Fox squirrels are not only distinguished from gray squirrels by their color, but are also nearly twice their size, commonly attaining a weight of two and sometimes nearly three pounds. They are the strongest and most heavily proportioned of all American squirrels. A deliberation of movement going with heaviness of body is in marked contrast to the graceful agility of most other tree squirrels. On the ground they walk with a curiously awkward, waddling gait, and even when hard pressed climb trees with none of the dashing quickness shown by other species. They often move about on the ground by a series of bounds, and at such times, with broad, feathery tails undulating in the air, present a most graceful and attractive sight.

Fox and gray squirrels occupy the same districts throughout most of their ranges, but often become so segregated locally that the grays may be found almost exclusively along bottom-lands and the fox squirrels on the higher ridges, but there is no hard and fast separation of haunts and the two forms usually share the same woodlands.

Much time is spent by fox squirrels on the ground searching for food. When danger approaches, in place of promptly taking refuge in a tree, as is a common habit with most tree squirrels, they retreat along the ground, mounting a stump or log now and then, to look back at a suspected intruder, whose footsteps they can hear at a long distance. If the hunter is without a dog they may run away and be lost. A dog soon forces them up a tree and if a knot-hole or other hollow is available they at once take refuge in it. Otherwise they hide skillfully in bunches of leaves high in the top or lie flat on a limb or against the trunk, slyly moving to keep on the opposite side as the hunter draws near. In the Mississippi Valley during the crisp days when the hickory nuts are falling and the trees are decked in all the glories of autumn foliage, few sports afield yield more pleasurable sensations than fox-squirrel hunting.