A Hermit's Wild Friends; or, Eighteen Years in the Woods

by Mason Augustus Walton

Right or wrong, it is a fact that the red squirrel bears a disreputable character. He is called a thief because he takes the farmers' corn, and a bloodthirsty wretch for robbing birds' nests. From my experience with the chickaree I am led to believe that he is not so black as painted. I used to think that he spared neither eggs nor young, but savagely robbed every bird's nest which he chanced to find. I certainly got this idea from books, for I cannot recall an instance where a bird's nest was robbed by a red squirrel.

For years I thought a squirrel was seeking food when he chased the birds in my dooryard. Now my eyes are open, and I am heartily ashamed of myself. I awoke from my trance to find that the red squirrel was simply chasing the birds out of the dooryard and away from the food, which he claimed as his own.

Twice last summer I saw a red squirrel pounce on a young towhee-bunting, but both times he let the bird go without the loss of a feather. It was evident that he did not intend to injure the bird, but merely desired to frighten it away. The intention was so evident that I could not ignore it, and it led me to do a lot of thinking.

PIGEON HAWK.

I carefully examined my notes for proof of the squirrel's guilt, and found no record against him. The guilty ones were the hawk, the owl, the snake, the stoat, the crow, the cat, the irrepressible boy, and the white-footed mouse. For fifteen years birds have nested around my cabin unmolested by the red squirrel.

It was always a mystery to me why the birds were not afraid of the red squirrel. Let a hawk, an owl, a weasel, a cat, a snake, or any of the animals known to prey on birds, enter my dooryard while birds were rearing their young, and the wildest alarm would prevail so long as the intruder was in sight. The red squirrel can come and go without a protest, which proves that the birds do not regard him as an enemy.

Whenever I have detected a squirrel investigating a bird's nest it has turned out that curiosity was the motive.

A pair of chickadees nested in a box that I had placed in an oak-tree, and a squirrel that spent the most of his time in the dooryard made it a duty to investigate the nest several times a day. He did not harm the young birds, and the old birds did not fear him.