Speaking of other food enjoyed by Squirrels, Mr. Coward sa y s : ‘ Squirrels
seem to enjoy young beech leaves; this spring we watched them pulling off and
eating the leaves, and the ground below was littered with the fragments. The
leaf itself did not appear to be touched, but only the fleshy stems. In winter
Squirrels feed in the thorns, nibbling the haws; they seem to like isolated thorns
better than hedgerows. One was noticed in an isolated thorn on the Dee Cop,
quite a distance from any wood.’
Squirrels are fond of taking their food to some elevated stone or tree stump
and there devouring it. It gives them a favourable position from which to look
about and observe the advent of enemies, and it saves them the trouble
of taking every scrap of food up the trees. Mr. L. Adams writes: ‘ In a
fir-wood in Shelston Park, Derby, on April 2, 1897, I came upon a flat-topped
stone covered with the bitten flakes of fir-cones. Was the stone used by a
Squirrel for a table?’ I think it was to a certain extent, but more as a place
whence a look-out could be obtained during an uninterrupted dinner. I have
several times seen a Squirrel carry a fin-cone to a certain broken tree in my uncle’s
garden in Perth and mount to his tower of observation until the food was
finished and then descend to look for more.
Mr. J . L. Bonhote1 thus describes the Squirrel’s mode of eating a hazel nut:
‘ The method of eating them was always the same. The nut would be held
by the large end, so that the long axis of the narrow portion was transverse to
the mouth, when an incision would be made until there was a hole large
enough for the insertion of the incisors between the shell and the kernel. Into this
hole the lower incisors would be placed, and a piece of the shell broken off by
a sharp twist of the head ; similar actions would be repeated until the whole of
the shell was broken off, and then the kernel would be devoured.’
Mr. O. V. Aplin2 relates how Squirrels gather beech mast off the trees and
take it to their winter storehouse: ‘ I watched for some time a pair of Squirrels,
which were busy gathering beech mast and carrying it to their winter retreat in some
thick spruce firs adjoining the beech trees. As the mast grows at the extreme
outside of the trees, and only at the ends of the slender drooping twigs, and
usually out of (Squirrel) reach of any of the thicker branches, I imagined they had
256, 257 ; 1869, p. 235. See also Zoologist, 1886, p. 24 (Squirrels stealing eggs of woodpecker); ibid. 1888, pp. 65, 105
(eating small birds and eggs); M eld, July 8, 1899 (eating ants’ eggs). Zoologist, 1885, p. 229; 1888, pp. 65, 105; 1896,
p. 298; and Meld, June 27, 1896, and February 27, 1892 (Squirrel eating small birds). Squirrels have been known to kill
and eat young rabbits, and have been seen to eat the flesh of a dead jay (F ield, May 29, 1897).
1 Zoologist, July 1901, p. 245. 2 Ib id . 1885, p. 479.
to content themselves with the fallen nuts. But I found that they ventured
boldly out into the small twigs, and, hanging on by their hind legs, drew the
mast to them with their forepaws and bit it off, when, with the exercise of the
greatest agility, they twisted round, and with a quick jump regained the stronger
branches. Of course a good deal of the mast fell to the ground, and Sciurus
seemed occasionally to get quite out of temper with a refractory twig which refused
to come to hand; when this happened the angry, impatient snatches made by the
little animals were quite amusing. No doubt they felt their position precarious,
for the breaking of a twig or the slip of a claw meant a clear twenty-foot drop,
with nothing to catch a t ; no great matter, of course, to a Squirrel when it throws
itself off a bough to drop, parachute-like, to the ground, but quite another thing
when taken as an unexpected fall.’
Nearly every writer speaks of the forethought and providence of the Squirrel
in creating a winter store. Thus a Latin writer says, Provident tempestates etiam
sc iu ri (even Squirrels provide against the rainy day), but I think this providence
is greatly exaggerated, and agree with Mr. Cornish, who cleverly remarks: ‘ They
do this in such a jerky, inconsequent, ineffectual way that one would imagine they
had been brought up in a permanent department of the War Office, which existed
to provide for the remote contingency of a campaign at the North Pole.’
Squirrels make stores about October and November, generally in any odd
hole and corner that presents itself, sometimes near the winter drey and sometimes
far from it. They seem to possess a perfect genius for forgetting where they have
put things, and consequently in mild winters they peer about looking for buried
treasure. No doubt the storage of this food supply originated when the climate
of our islands was severer than it is to-day, and now the force of habit and
instinct is too strong for the practice to be dropped.
In such mild winters as we experience in the South of England Squirrels
can hardly be said to hibernate at all. A large number of Squirrels undoubtedly
remain active throughout the winter, and even in the coldest weather I have seen
many running about in the woods at Murthly, Perthshire, the greatest Squirrel
haunt I know of in the United Kingdom. Bell says1 that the Squirrel ‘ remains
during the greater part of the winter in a state of almost complete torpidity—
coming abroad, however, on the occurrence of a fine day.’ But this is not correct,
as it may be seen abroad in keen frost and deep snow.2 Most Squirrels sleep
1 B ritish Quadrupeds, p. 292,
2 There is a note in Science Gossip, 1874, p. 143, to the effect that thirty Squirrels were found in an old oak at Cudham,
Kent, on February 7 in a semi-dormant state, but this seems rather too many dreamers for one tree.
VOL. II.