Increasing daylight in January caused squirrel hormones to surge. You could see them getting more active and agitated when their mating season began.
Pheromone-perfumed females led hormone-charged males spiraling up, over, around, and through our hardwood studded yards, parks, and forests. The first squirrels of the year are being born now. By April at the latest, we’ll begin seeing their young feeding independently, especially at dawn and dusk. Tufts Vet School’s Wildlife Clinic surely will again have squirrel orphans dropped off for them to care for.
After briefly parenting their two or three babies, our prolific squirrels will mate again anytime from May to July, producing a second litter. Their two yearly population surges feed many dependent predators that hunt them relentlessly from land and sky. Squirrels are very familiar with red-tailed hawks, fishers, coyotes, great horned owls, raccoons and foxes.
Potentially living to about age 5, each pair could easily produce a couple dozen offspring, which over the same period could produce hundreds of young. The forests would be soon overrun with squirrels if predators didn’t drastically reduce their numbers.
Generally, gray squirrels disperse no more than about 2 miles from where they were born, so heavy populations can develop in an area of good habitat, especially where there are oaks and bird feeders to supply them nuts and seed. I bet half of the 300 pounds of sunflower hearts I buy each year feeds them. Their fruit, nut and seed diet enhances the flavor of their meat, highly sought after by a small but passionate coterie.
Though tasty, they’re tough, requiring marinating prior to southern frying or slow, moist crockpot-style cooking. Their small size, generally about a 1 to 1-1/2 pounds, as well as tough-to-remove skin deters many locals from developing a fondness for them. However, in other parts of the country, particularly the South, they’re surprisingly relished by a large and enthusiastic following.
How many gray squirrels are in your backyard? There seems to be an almost endless number. If you painted each one’s tail a different color, you’d soon run out of paints. Attempts to eradicate problem squirrels generally end futilely as peripheral populations fill in temporary vacuums almost immediately.
Quality of habitat — for squirrels as well as any other wildlife — is the key to their variable population density. Recent studies show their population density in Alabama ranged between 18 and 169 per square kilometer. Illinois had up to 368. West Virginia’s population varied between 52 and 348. Maryland’s density ranged from 297 to 964, and Virginia incredibly had anywhere from 110 to an astounding 1,408.
My neighborhood has both squirrel lovers and squirrel haters, some quite extreme. The latter vilify them as “tree rats,” an allusion to their rodent affiliation and propensity for destructive behavior. The former prove supportive fans, finding squirrels’ intelligent behavior and bushy umbrella-parasol-blanket tails charming and entertaining. No one’s love for squirrels proves more positive, though, than squirrel hunters, who vigorously advocate for large populations and, through their license fees, acquire and preserve habitat for them.
Squirrel numbers can fluctuate drastically from year to year, reacting to unstable mast and other food crops, predation, weather, disease and nest site availability. Some years, you can get your limit just sitting in a tree stand. Other years, you need to do a little walking.
With ranges from a half to more than eight acres, there’s much territorial overlap.
In territories with ample tree cavities, they do better than where they have to build flimsy, less protective leaf nests. They’ll consequently wage battles with pileated woodpeckers for the nest cavities the big chiseling birds create.
Despite the great acorn failure of the last couple of years, there seem to still be plenty squirrels. I’ve never heard of anyone locally concerned enough to put up squirrel nest boxes, though the practice is common in other parts of the country.
As for food, depending on the season, apple buds and flowers, sugar maple buds, oak buds, hickory and beech nuts, red, black, pin, and white oak acorns, mulberry, butternut, walnuts, fungi, berries, grapes, and seeds — especially sunflower seeds — promote their population growth. Nearly insatiable, they’ll opportunistically devour baby birds, bird eggs, and amphibians, too.
Although squirrels obviously love buds, they can’t resist highly caloric, oily sunflower seed. It’s their butter and chocolate. My bird feeders admittedly contribute to the excessive numbers of squirrels in my neighborhood. This winter, they again destroyed one of my bird feeders — but maybe for the last time.
I was recently shown a strategy that has kept feeders untouched. One cleverly places pre-cut PVC piping of various short lengths, sufficient in number to cover both sides of a line suspended four feet above the ground between two distant trees. Squirrels learn quickly they can’t jump high enough to get to the feeder from the ground. But it takes them a comically entertaining period longer to figure out that it’s futile to try to walk the line. They spin around on the PVC sections, dropping off like uncoordinated drunkards. Once they figure out the futility of trying further, showtime is over, and the bird feeder reverts to feeding just birds.
Contact Mark Blazis at email@example.com