Wildlife Spotlight: Squirrels
Meet Nutsy the Grey Squirrel
‘Look at that! He finally did it. It’s only taken six years.’
I’m looking out of the kitchen window, a hot cup of tea in hand, admiring the scene before me.
It’s an overcast day in late April, and my cheekiest garden visitor, the grey squirrel I’ve named Nutsy, is hugging the peanut feeder. Upside down. His claws grasping the wire like his life depends on it. He’s swinging like a monkey and having a feast.
After years of waiting, he’s finally discovered a route to the peanuts.
It’s been a long time coming.
Six long years of longing, and scheming, but he’s finally made it.
Thanks to the explosive growth of the crab apple tree, and a fortuitous shift in position of the bird bath. The squirrel baffle is useless and the bird feeder is now officially squirrel territory.
But I’m happy. I love Nutsy, and to have him performing cirque du soleil worthy acrobatics in front of my window is cause for celebration in my opinion.
It feels fitting that this triumphant moment should occur in the same place I saw Nutsy for the first time. I remember it well. The bird garden was bare. The fence newly built, not yet covered in shrubs. And the grass was neatly trimmed.
I was standing at the kitchen sink, hands covered in soap suds, when a movement caught my eye. I looked up, and there he was, scampering along the fence towards our neighbours garden.
I shouted, ‘we’ve got a squirrel!’ to anyone who might be in earshot. And did a little happy dance.
Grey squirrels are not exactly an unusual sight here in the Yorkshire countryside - as the vast array of anti squirrel bird feeders in any local garden centre will attest to.
But for me, this chisel-toothed rodent was a creature I had only ever spotted in tree studded fields around our old home – never in my garden. I used to love my walks with my dog Mac around our local area and I would always consider it an especially good day if I managed to spot a squirrel.
A cute little creature, with a silver-grey coat and characteristically bushy tail (which they will conveniently use as a blanket to keep warm in cold weather) squirrels are not to everyone’s liking.
In fact, grey squirrels have a bit of a reputation. Plenty of the British population strongly dislike them.
According to Jason Gilchrist of The Conversation:-
Grey squirrels are a contradiction. They have all the characteristics of animals that people tend to love, and yet they are actively persecuted by humankind. BBC presenter Chris Packham calls them Britain’s “most unpopular non-native invader” – and one of their unflattering nicknames is the “tree rat”.
Classified as an invasive non-native species, grey squirrels were introduced from North America in the late 19th century. They outcompete the native red squirrel for resources such as nuts and berries and are carriers of squirrel pox, a disease to which they are immune, but the red squirrel is not. This combination of factors has led to them becoming the dominant squirrel across most of the UK.
They are also disliked by foresters due to the damage they inflict upon trees. Grey squirrels strip bark from the trunks and branches to feed on the nutritious sap beneath, and use it in the building of their nests (known as dreys). This can leave the tree vulnerable to pests and diseases or sometimes kill them completely.
My childhood didn’t involve meeting many squirrels.
For me they were an elusive, fairy-tale creature, limited to picture books and stories such as ‘The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin’ by Beatrix Potter. And I was only interested in the red ones.
It wasn’t until my teens that the grey squirrel became a creature I was seriously interested in seeing in the flesh. Remember that advert for Carling Black Label? That’s the first time I really started paying attention to them.
Ingeniously set to the Mission Impossible theme tune, it shows a grey squirrel showing off an impressive set of skills as it makes its way through an obstacle course to some highly prized nuts.
I still love watching it now. You can see the full advert here.
Nutsy demonstrates similar skills on a regular basis. He performs amazing feats of agility in order to access the peanuts, scales tall trees in a flash, and I’ve even seen him scuttling sideways along my fence like a spider; clinging to the wood as his usual route along the top of the fence has been covered with overgrown shrubs.
Squirrels effectively do handstands in order to transfer the kinetic energy from their jumps, enabling them to stay on the branch they’ve landed upon. They also have double-jointed ankles, allowing their feet to face both forwards and backwards.
Here’s a demonstration… the moment Nutsy finally achieved his goal.
They have four fingers and five toes, can swim, run up to 20mph, hang upside down and can be right or left handed!
Grey squirrels have even led to major breakthroughs in robotics. UC Berkeley biologists and engineers analysed footage of squirrels leaping between thin, flexible branches and then applied these findings to a one-legged jumping robot named Salto – who became the first robot to successfully land on a narrow perch. (Let’s not talk about the idea of jumping robots however… 😱)
Even if I don’t see him, I always know when Nutsy has been around. An unexpected crunch underfoot often reveals a divot of upturned grass, where he has unearthed buried treasure. Squirrels will cache their food in autumn if it’s abundant.
My regular feeding regime of mixed nuts is clearly appreciated. It always makes me smile to find an empty nutshell in a random location. Even in spots that I wouldn’t imagine.
Grey squirrels can bury in excess of 3000 nuts in a season, spatially organising them by variety of nut, relying on scent to locate them again when required.
Then there are the trees that Nutsy plants for us. I have at least two new horse chestnut saplings growing on my plot, and likely many more I’m unaware of.
My decision to plant a hazel hedge was largely due to my fondness for this little squirrel, intending it to produce an abundance of nuts for his consumption.
The wildlife camera revealed that Nutsy has developed a daily routine of coming for a drink and then inspecting the feeder. Just like my morning trip to Starbucks. It broke my heart to have to take the peanut feeders down for the summer (for the wellbeing of my birds), but I still put a handful of peanuts on the tree stump for the crows and the squirrel.
My resident squirrel might be friendly towards me, the provider of food. But he’s not so keen on the other birds and creatures that also consider the wildlife garden their territory.
I get the impression this crow knows it…
In winter, when I visit the wildlife garden, I often find the bird feeder on the ground, its contents long gone. There’s no doubt that people the world over are frustrated by squirrels’ ability to get to the food they kindly leave out for the birds.
A NASA mechanical engineer, Mark Rober even took to building an elaborate obstacle ‘Ninja Warrior’ course in his backyard to stop squirrels raiding his bird feeder.
It’s a fascinating and fun journey to watch as the squirrels adapt and defeat his traps at lightning speed, calculating jumps in under a millisecond.
You can see the full story here:-
Over the years I’ve become very accustomed to Nutsy’s presence. He was one of the first creatures to introduce himself to the wildlife camera, and these days I often spot him in the middle of the garden, sitting upright and alert, his bottle brush tail tucked neatly against his back.
I love it when the camera captures him doing his traditional squirrel pose, nibbling nuts, or grooming himself.
Maverick is very familiar with him too. Whilst my lovely Labrador will casually canter towards a wood pigeon or a blackbird to chase them away - Nutsy is a different matter.
Maverick gallops at speed towards the unsuspecting squirrel, who will sprint off towards the tree line. What makes me laugh is that no matter where he is on the plot, Nutsy will always run in the same direction. Which means that the further away he is from the trees, the more likely he is to find Maverick inches away from his tail.
Recently, I’ve had regular meetings with him in his favourite haunt, the willow trees. A few weeks ago I was planning to do a wildlife spotlight on blue tits and was patiently filming a tree crevice in which a pair of blue tits were raising a family.
I heard a scrabbling and a snap of twigs which caused me to look up, to see Nutsy on a low branch, peering right at me – as if to say ‘never mind them, what about me?’
As Nutsy and I watched one another, I soon forgot about the blue tits. He slowly peeked his nose out further and further, uncertain but curious. We stayed that way for a while, until I decided to return to the house.
At that point Nutsy launched into a high wire agility performance. Leaping through the trees above me, often appearing suspended in time with his paws splayed in freeze frame against the blue sky behind.
Each time he landed. I would stop, look up, and we would watch one another. Then I would walk and he would repeat the performance again. We did this all the way along the willows until I noticed that I wasn’t the only one watching him. Maverick was staring upwards in seeming disbelief. Since that encounter Maverick knows to look out for him, and often spots him up in the trees, long before I do.
Something about this encounter made me question whether Nutsy is in fact ‘a he.’ I had the feeling that I might have got it wrong. Especially when my neighbour told me he’d seen a squirrel taking nesting material up one of his trees (the female does the heavy lifting when it comes to nest construction) But since it’s incredibly difficult to identify the sex of a squirrel without inspecting their privates, I hope you’ll forgive me for sticking with my original conclusion.
I had a moment earlier this year when I thought Nutsy had met his end. Maverick was sniffing intently at a patch of hedgerow under the tree line, and closer inspection revealed a dead squirrel, who appeared to have died of natural causes. I was pretty devastated. Yet, not long afterwards, to my immense relief, Nutsy appeared on camera once again. I really cannot imagine my garden without him.
I did, however, worry for what I assumed must have been his mate. How would Nutsy find a new companion? How do squirrels even find their way to new places? We have some wonderful mature trees, but we are in the middle of vast landscape of open agricultural land. Why would a creature make the pilgrimage just to find our little patch of trees, I wondered, even if I do spend an inordinate amount of money on nuts.
But I needn’t have worried. As shortly after witnessing Nutsy’s success at the bird feeder. A few moments later, I saw a smudge of grey and a wobble of leaves, and a shy smaller squirrel peeked out from the top of the crab apple tree.
I was elated. Nutsy was not.
Cue a fight.
A blur of grey fur and a flurry of leaves and Nutsy emerged victorious. Perhaps this wasn’t his mate after all. But then I discovered that squirrels will still defend their individual caches and food territories even from a mate. Especially the female if she has young to feed. I can relate, I’m not a fan of sharing my food either, no matter how much I like you.
But the strength of my squirrel pair’s relationship need not be a concern. Apparently grey squirrels never mate with the same squirrel twice and one litter (adorably known as ‘kittens’) can be produced by multiple fathers. No judgement.
Which brings me to an exciting announcement.
Watching the wildlife camera footage this month revealed, not one, not two, but three squirrels! Which can only mean one thing. We officially have baby Nutsy’s!
No wonder they were so busy at the feeder, they had hungry mouths to feed. I look forward to seeing more of them, as, if there are not too many squirrels in the area, the squirrel’s young will stay nearby. Apparently siblings often share dreys and will look out for one another for life.
So, now I have no idea which squirrel I am seeing when I look out of the window, but I love the fact that Mr and Mrs Nutsy have raised a family here. I can’t wait for Autumn when I can put the peanuts out and watch the entertainment from my kitchen window again.
Despite their reputation, it’s impossible to deny that grey squirrels are skilful, adaptable, clever creatures. Nutsy is curious, adventurous, determined, and a little bit feisty – all qualities that I admire. But most of all, I feel he has become my friend.
Having a resident squirrel is not without its challenges. There’s the digging up of the lawn, the stealing of the peanuts, the stripping of the trees, the heart stopping moments when I think that my dog is about to catch a squirrel.
But I have plenty of trees, plenty of peanuts, and Maverick is the most gentle dog I’ve ever met. So Nutsy and his family are welcome to stay with me as long as they wish, and I hope that’s a very long time.
How do you feel about squirrels? Tree rats or cute critters? Let me know in the comments.
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INFORMATION SOURCES
https://www.flockingaround.com/post/do-squirrels-eat-birds
https://squirrelaccord.uk/news/blog/grey-squirrel-tree-damage-evidence/
Nutsy is such a little character! I didn’t know they could swim, or that they could be either left or right pawed!
LOVE my grey squirrel Mr. Henry Nutney! And lately I have little Nutkins. I also have red squirrels Hanz and Franz, the Pignoli brothers. I think they are siblings because they are always together. I always talk to them when I'm in the garden. They make me happy.