This is harvest season, a time to prepare for the long winter ahead. In the city and in the country, gray squirrels are busy taking advantage of autumn’s abundance, putting up acorns and other food items they will need during the cold months when food is scarce.
They eat a variety of foods: seeds, nuts, leaves, bulbs, roots, bark, mushrooms, insects, worms, eggs, small birds, even other small animals. They will eat tomatoes and strawberries out of the garden. They will eat the food you put out for the birds; if to distract the squirrels you also put out peanuts, they will take the peanuts and bring them to the neighbor’s yard, dig a shallow hole in the perennial bed, and stash the peanut for later. They will hide food all over the neighborhood, each time taking note of surrounding landmarks. They might bury the food quickly and come back in an hour, a day, or a week, using spatial memory and a sharp sense of smell to recover and relocate the buried food. Other caches they will leave for months. A single squirrel will bury food in thousands of locations.
The scientific term for this behavior is “scatter hoarding.” It takes up the majority of their day. They will “pretend” to bury food if they think they are being watched. They will hide behind the hosta and ferns while digging, or carry their peanut up into a tree.
Those who dislike squirrels because of this behavior might consider this:
About 30 percent of what they hide will never be recovered, instead the nuts and seeds and cones stay buried and become trees. In this way, squirrels are responsible for forest regeneration.
Read more at Natural Resources Council of Maine.
Catherine Schmitt 