This habit is referred to in the ‘ Old Statistical Account of Scotland,’ 1 where the
animal receives reprobation on account of the damage it does amongst singing
birds and for taking pheasants’ eggs. Of this latter habit Colonel E . A. Butler
kindly sends me the following note:
‘ Squirrels, though undoubtedly pretty, are most destructive animals, as the
following incidents will show. When residing at Herringfleet Hall, near Lowestoft,
a few years ago, the rearing field one season was selected near a plantation
of Scotch firs, and when the young pheasants were about the size of partridges
they began to disappear in a most mysterious manner. The hens in the coops
would suddenly begin to cackle, and when the keeper went to ascertain the cause
he invariably found a young bird missing, though nothing to show what had
become of it. At last, after losing a number of birds, he saw a Squirrel one
afternoon go up to a coop, seize a young bird, and run up a fir tree to its
“ drey,” in which it had young ones ; and as it ascended the tree he shot it with
the young pheasant in its mouth. Under the tree lay the remains of several
others which it had killed.
‘ Upon another occasion last year, hearing the sparrows mobbing something
in my orchard, I went to the spot, gun in hand, and found quite a small flock of
them chattering round a sparrow’s nest high up in an apple tree. The nest
began to heave up and down in such an extraordinary way that it was at once
evident that something very unusual was taking place within. Suddenly a Squirrel
with a young sparrow in its mouth appeared at the entrance, and after running
a few feet along a branch sat up on its hindquarters and commenced eating it,
holding the bird between its forepaws as it would have done an acorn. Shortly
afterwards I shot it.
‘ Squirrels are also very fond of eggs, and are often caught in traps baited
with these for jays and crows during the spring. Upon one occasion I found
several of my wild ducks’ eggs sucked, and on setting a trap baited with others
taken from a nest close by I caught two Squirrels, after which the nests were
not again disturbed, which showed that they were the culprits.’
Squirrels catch numbers of chaffinches, which are notoriously tame birds: they
leap upon them when they are feeding on the beech mast. I think, however,
that all these cases of carnivorous Squirrels are merely instances of isolated
individuals, and are not characteristic of the normal taste of the species.2
1 Vol. ix. 1793, p. 235.
2 References to the carnivorous and egg-stealing propensities of Squirrels are too numerous to quote from, but many
examples will be found in the pages of Science Gossip. See 1871, pp. 131, 189, 214, 237, 238; seen to attack a young rabbit,