(For illustration, [see page 546])
Every one who has visited the forests of Canada and northeastern United States knows the vivacious, rollicking, and frequently impudent red squirrel. This entertaining little beast, known also as the pine squirrel and chickaree, has little of that woodland shyness so characteristic of most forest animals. It often searches out the human visitor to its haunts and from a low branch or tree trunk sputters, barks, and scolds the intruder, working itself into a frenzy of excitement. This habit, combined with the rusty red color and small size of the animal, about half that of the gray squirrel, renders its identity unmistakable. It has distinct winter and summer coats, but in both the rusty red prevails. The winter dress is distinguished, however, by small tufts on the ears.
The red squirrel, with its related small species, occupying most of the wooded parts of North America north of Mexico, forms a strongly characterized group, with no near kin among the squirrels of the Old World. In its geographic races it ranges through the forests of all Alaska and Canada and south to Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, northern Indiana, all the Northeastern States to the District of Columbia, and along the Alleghenies to South Carolina. Owing to its small size, this animal, like the chipmunk, is considered too small for game, although occasionally hunted for sport. As a consequence its increase or decrease is usually governed by the available food supply, although man interferes locally when it becomes too destructive.
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.