They are essentially introverts, yet they hunt and feed and breed in plain view in our own backyards. They can be ruthless predators, merciless vandals, or unwitting comediennes. Sure, they’re rodents, but spend some time this winter getting to know your squirrels.
After all, squirrels are among our most abundant and accessible wild mammals. With thousands of miles in the woods behind me, I have encountered but a handful of black bears, a few fishers, and a grand total of two bobcats. Squirrels are far more obvious and almost as charismatic.
In Vermont and New Hampshire, we all know the two common species: eastern gray squirrel, which prefers deciduous woods, and red squirrel, found more often in evergreen woods. But we have three other squirrel-family members: eastern chipmunk, northern flying squirrel and southern flying squirrel. The chipmunks are in burrows for the winter and flying squirrels are nocturnal. But daytime in winter is a fine time to turn your binoculars on red and gray squirrels, who, by the way, don’t need warmth to get excited, or hot, in the woods.
But first, what makes a squirrel a squirrel? What makes them so, well, squirrely? To my reckoning, it is teeth, toes and tail. Teeth and toes reveal much about where an animal goes, what it eats, how it survives. But with a squirrel the tail may be the most endearing and interesting component of its body plan.
Squirrels use their tails for balance while tightrope-walking on limbs or leaping from tree to tree. Accounting for about 40 percent of the squirrel’s body length, the tail also can be a distraction to a predator; in a tussle with a bobcat, for example, it is far better to lose one’s tail than one’s head.
More importantly, the tail has a role in thermoregulation. A raised tail can shelter a squirrel from rain or snow or heat from the sun. A bundle of blood vessels at the base of the tail allows squirrels either to retain heat within the body core, crucial in winter, or dissipate it outward through the tail in summer, which is great during heat waves.
But squirrels also “talk” with their tails, something I try to observe during my time outside squirrel-watching. When agitated, red and gray squirrels will issue various vocalizations – mostly barking and chattering. But they also raise and flick their tails to show alarm or aggression.
Tails may also factor into squirrel courtship and mating, which I regret to say I have yet to witness. That’s because squirrels are largely solitary animals. Sure, we’ll see a few of them together at the bird feeder. But they spend most of their lives alone, except during the breeding season, which happens once or twice a year. And it happens mostly during winter, so that the female’s two or three young are born in spring and can exploit the season’s abundance of food.
Most females—which typically outnumber males five-to-one—are in estrus and receptive to males for no more than eight hours on a single day during the breeding season. The consequence of this skewed gender ratio and females playing hard-to-get is that life during the breeding season can be, to say the least, challenging for the male. He’ll spend lots of time following her in the days before she is in estrus. Should he be too forthcoming, too eager before she is ready, she will rebuff his advances with a swat to the face or a painful bite.
And when those precious eight hours finally arrive, a male is hardly alone for the drama. He often must compete, and fight, with other males for her affections (actually for a copulation that lasts about 20 seconds.) “To the casual observer, what ensues is probably best described as pure and unadulterated chaos,” write biologists Michael A. Steele and John L. Koprowski in their fantastic book, “North American Tree Squirrels.”
Now, I don’t know about you. But most any self-respecting naturalist, when it comes to breeding, would relish witnessing “pure and unadulterated chaos” during a walk in the forest or even out by the backyard feeders.
So head for the woods and by all means look for a male squirrel on the trail of a female. You’ll just have to pick the right eight hours.