by Winding Pathways | Sep 5, 2024 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Foraging, Mammals
A few years ago, after seeing many squirrels with nearly naked tails we researched and posted a blog in February 2022. Furless Tailed Squirrels.
The response amazed us. People from around the world visited it and still do every day. We had no idea this condition was so widespread.
So, we’re posting a follow-up. Two winters have passed and our squirrels now have perfectly normal furry tails. We’re unsure if older squirrels have regrown fur or if the new generation never had the condition. Since most squirrels don’t live for more than a few years, we will likely see younger animals.
Whatever conditions caused them to lose their fur seem over. That’s not unusual in wildlife populations. If a serious disease or calamity reduces the population the condition subsides and survivors reproduce with enthusiasm, rapidly restoring abundance.
Based on our website traffic we suspect furless-tailed squirrels have been found far and wide. We predict that they, like our Iowa squirrels, will rebound with healthy furry-tailed animals.
A Short Squirrel Primer
Although many people dislike squirrels for their habit of gobbling up feed intended for birds, we like them. Squirrels are just as fascinating as goldfinches or cardinals, so we put out enough seed for both.
During the 2024 Summer Olympics, we were thrilled watching the graceful and powerful movements of Simone Biles, other gymnasts, and pole vaulters like, Armand “Mondo” Duplantis.
What happens when a squirrel falls?
We’ve not heard of a comparable competition for squirrels, but they are also amazing gymnasts and vaulters. In our yard a small oak and a large walnut live next to each other. Every fall the walnut is loaded with nuts that tempt squirrels. We love watching them climb the oak to its tippy top and then make an amazing upward leap to a flimsy walnut twig above. Like human gymnasts and vaulters, squirrels have impeccable balance, flexibility, strength, determination, and courage.
Treetop leaps aren’t always successful. Twice we’ve seen squirrels slip off high oak branches and fall 30 or 40 feet to the lawn below. Both times the hapless animals spread eagle, landed with a thump, and scampered off apparently uninjured. They are an amazing animal.
Late Summer Activity
As we write this in late summer walnuts and acorns are maturing. People may not like squirrels but these trees need them so much their annual nut crop is a bribe. Squirrels eagerly gather and eat many of the nuts but they scamper off and bury some, often a long way from the parent tree. Some nuts are never dug up and become a new tree generation. The exchange is a good deal for both trees and squirrels.
The rodents get nutritious food. Walnuts and acorns get free tree planting. Both win.
Hopefully, anyone reading this is enjoying squirrels that have grown fur on their once furless tails. Enjoy these amazing animals. To learn more about squirrels visit Animal Diversity.
by Winding Pathways | Aug 10, 2023 | Mammals, Nature, Trees/Shrubs
Squirrels: Free Tree Planters
Our neighborhood squirrels proved they are the best tree planters.
We lost most of our mature trees in the 2020 Derecho.
An August 2020 derecho tore through Iowa pushing 140-mile-an-hour wind against trees and buildings. Trees by the hundreds of thousands tumbled to the ground. Winding Pathways wasn’t spared. We lost most of our firs, oaks, hickories, and cottonwoods. The devastation in nearby Faulkes Heritage Woods was even worse.
Almost immediately, shocked people took action. Government forestry departments, aided by tree planting nonprofits, and private citizens unleashed their shovels and planted thousands of trees. So did the squirrels. Well, not really. People planted trees.
Squirrels bury nuts in caches to retrieve them later.
Squirrels planted nuts and acorns.
Then three seasons of drought followed. Once planted, most trees were not tended as they need to be. So, many human-planted trees shriveled in the heat and dryness, while the nuts buried by squirrels sprouted and the new trees were flourishing.
But why?
We have theories. A human-planted tree seedling needs plenty of moisture to keep its trunk and new leaves hydrated. Sparse roots must pull water from the ground and send it upward. That’s a tough job in a wet year. Come drought it’s nearly impossible.
Squirrels did better. These industrious rodents don’t mean to create new trees. They’re simply storing nuts underground so they have enough fat and protein-rich food to tide them through winter. All they need to do is dig up a nut when hunger calls. Squirrels overfill their larder, burying more tasty nuts than they’ll ever need. Unfortunate squirrels are eaten by hawks, foxes, owls, or humans, but the nuts they’d buried remain patiently waiting for spring’s warmth to germinate.
Sprouting nuts grow roots able to pull scarce moisture from the soil and send it to new baby leaves poking through the ground.
As we walked through July 2023’s dry woods we sadly see human-planted trees shriveled up and dead, while nearby a new generation of tiny walnut, oak, and hickories is rising from nuts planted by industrious squirrels.
-
-
Newly planted trees need watering.
-
-
This squirrel planted walnut seedling sprouted just this year in spite of the drought.
Squirrels Don’t Plant All The Trees
Squirrels are the best friends of nut-bearing trees, but other tree species can’t rely on the furry rodents. Cottonwoods, for example, produce millions of seeds too tiny for squirrel food. So, the trees grow cottony fluff that floats seeds to distant places. If one lands in a patch of moist bear soil a fast-growing cottonwood sprouts. Maples have helicopter-like seeds that whirl a gig away from the parent to sprout a ways away.
Pity the poor Osage Orange tree that grows huge citrus-smelling balls containing hidden seeds. Many folks call them hedge apples. A tree must get its seeds away from its own shade. Squirrels do the job for oaks. The wind for cottonwoods. Massive mastodons once munched on Osage Orange hedge apples, wandered off, digested the pulp, and pooped out the seeds. When these massive elephants went extinct the tree lost its partner and saw its native range shrink from much of North America to a tiny spot down south.
Nature provides many ways for trees to reproduce and the results are often superior to what humans can do. We appreciate the squirrels that plant nuts many of which sprout into healthy native trees. Thanks, squirrels!
by Winding Pathways | Feb 24, 2022 | Mammals
The birds we share Winding Pathways with have a good life. Our property has old trees, prairies, and bushes to provide lots of natural food plus nooks and crannies for chickadees, nuthatches, and other species to hide and shelter from tough weather.
Squirrel tails have many uses.
Birds aren’t the only animals that gorge on the sunflower seeds and corn we daily put in the backyard. Deer, raccoons, and opossums sometimes visit at night. And squirrels constantly work the day shift.
Two Species
Two squirrel species visit our feeders. Grays are more of an eastern species that prefer woodlands with big trees, while Fox Squirrels prefer edges – places where woods meet prairies, cornfields, or meadows. They are most common in the Midwest.
Even in winter the squirrels’ fur looks healthy…except for their tails.
In spring 2021 through winter 2022, we have noticed that many squirrels, especially grays, had few tail hairs, making them look like rat tails. That’s not good for a squirrel.
Squirrels use tails for balance.
Their bushy tail is more than an ornament. We’ve observed three important uses. It helps them balance. Notice this when you see squirrels cross wires or balance on tiny branches bouncing in the wind. On cold and wet days, we see squirrels drape their tail over their back, perhaps like putting another blanket on the bed or a poncho. Twice we’ve seen squirrels fall from tall oaks. Both times they “spread eagle” in the air with their legs and tails outstretched. They descended with their body horizontal, hit the ground with a thump, and took off running, apparently unhurt. So, their tail helped them parachute down.
Furless Tails
According to Dr. Neil Bernstein, a squirrel lacking a tail may have been in a mating fight with another male and came out the loser. Four of our resident squirrels have a tail but each lacks hair. It could be mange, but this often leaves a bare patch of skin on the animal’s body. Our squirrels have perfect body hair.
Loss of tail hair could be caused by a fungal disease called dermatophytosis. Often this causes hairs to break off, rather than shed from the skin. A squirrel with this condition has short bristles. We think that’s the case with our squirrels.
Often otherwise healthy squirrels recover from mange or dermatophytosis. We hope ours will.
by Winding Pathways | Feb 10, 2022 | Birds, Mammals, Nature, Pests
Guest Blogger, Dr. No More Squirrels
(Photos by Dr. NMS)
Much of my time and energy has been spent battling a 1-pound enemy – the gray squirrel. I love feeding and watching birds, but with a neighborhood full of acorn-bearing oak trees I feel no guilt at all at not wanting to pay for bird food and letting the squirrels eat it. Through trial and error, I have found how to place all our feeders so that they are always out of the reach of squirrels. Almost always. Every few months a new guy shows up; a determined daredevil squirrel who figures out how to slide 20 feet down the string holding a feeder to get to the mother lode.
-
-
A variety of feeders for the birds.
-
-
the “raiders” jump through hoops to get to the feeders.
When that happens, it’s time for an involuntary relocation.
This was the case on a frigid January morning here in Minneapolis. My live trap was set and within minutes I heard it snap shut. But what I then saw was a shock. The squirrel was trapped all right, but sitting next to the trap was an immature red-tailed hawk! She hopped onto the trap and all around it, trying to get at what she thought would be an easy breakfast.
Minutes later, she gave up and flew to a nearby perch to contemplate how she had been beaten by a 1-pound ball of gray fur.
I knew exactly how she felt.
-
-
This immature red-tail hawk tries to figure out how to get the squirrel.
-
-
Landing on the trap
by Winding Pathways | Feb 13, 2020 | Birds, Mammals, Nature
This Albino Woodpecker comes to the feeder regularly.
Several months ago, we looked out our dining room window and saw an unusual woodpecker enjoying suet at a feeder only a few feet away. It was a downy but it’s head was almost completely white, unlike all others of the same species we’ve seen.
Last year we had a fox squirrel with an unusually short tail that hung around our yard for months. We’ve also spotted other wild animals with distinctive markings unusual for their species, healed but visible wounds and other characteristics that help identify it as an individual.
The Power of Observation
Being able to identify an individual animal adds to the fun of wildlife observation. For example, from the squirrel, we learned that he or she mostly just stayed in our yard and nearby woods. We never spotted it at a neighbor’s yard. Then, one day we remarked, “We haven’t seen’ shorty tail’ for a while”. We actually never saw the animal again and assumed he or she met his end due to an accident, predator, car collision, or some other catastrophic incident. Because we could tell him from other squirrels, we know he lived at least ten months.
The piebald woodpecker still comes to our feeder, and we’re getting to know it as an individual rather than just a generic downy. It adds to the fun of wildlife observation.
Like people, animals are individuals. At first glance, every one may look the same but with careful observation, it’s possible to spot differences in plumage, fur, size, shape, gait, and even personality that help identify it as an individual. Scientists studying animals ranging from whales to snow leopards often learn to distinguish one from another by the pattern of barnacles on a whale’s body to the markings on a cat’s fur.
It’s a totally noninvasive way of distinguishing one from another. We can do this with common yard wild animals.
Do Squirrels Ever Fall?
What happens when a squirrel falls?
Squirrels are amazingly agile, but they do slip and fall. It’s not common, but it happens. Rich has seen two squirrels fall from the top of large oak trees.
One squirrel lost its footing on a huge oak tree at the Indian Creek Nature Center when Rich was walking nearby. It spread out its legs and tail and fell horizontally, hitting the ground with a “thump”. Although it fell at least 40 feet the squirrel appeared uninjured, scampered off, and climbed right back up the oak.
Another squirrel fell from an even bigger oak in our home’s backyard. It did the same as the Nature Center Squirrel and spread out its body, hit the ground, and ran right off.
Squirrels rarely fall, but once in a while, they do. Fortunately, as this YouTube video shows, they seem amazingly able to recover from a fall that would instantly kill a human.
What are some of the animals you know as individuals? Let us know!
