A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Sciurus carolinensis
This is one of very few mammalian species that can descend a tree head-first by turning its feet so that the claws of its hind paws are backward pointing and can grip the tree bark. Gray squirrels hoard food in numerous small caches for later recovery. It has been estimated that each squirrel makes several thousand caches each season. They have very accurate spatial memory for the locations of these caches, and use distant and nearby landmarks to retrieve them. Smell is used once the squirrel is within a few centimeters of the cache.
My yard
Spotted on Dec 11, 2012
Submitted on Dec 15, 2012
4 Comments
Thanks, Ava. Yuko, the squirrels in my yard are ALWAYS hungry! I have baffles on the feeders and space them away from other things they could jump from and a couple are just very ingenious in getting onto the feeder anyway. Jellis, thanks for the tip! I knew about putting cayenne pepper in the suet but hadn't thought to do it for seed.
Learned a trick on keeping squirrels out of bird feeders. Put some cayenne pepper in with the seeds. Birds don't taste it but squirrels can.
He must have been VERY hungry!
Great pictures and information.