Where are all the squirrels?

My dooryard.

You're in a suburban location, right? Are there lots of oak trees in your neighborhood? Some years the trees that produce food (called "mast") that squirrels, deer, even bears and other wild animals survive on don't produce as much as usual. When this happens the local populations will plummet, although often they've just moved to a new territory. Predators could also lower the local population, either from above, like hawks and owls, or terrestrial predators like foxes and house cats.

My house.

Free grub.

Bird seed, sunflower seed, corn cobs.

It's costing us a fortune.

You can have them back now. I think they're coming in from a tri-state area.


Oh, by the way... The little things carried off 3, yes three, suet cage holders. Found one stuck up in the tree, the other 2 in the neighbor's yard.

all over my neighbourhood

all over

They're at my house. I'll put them on the green line and they should be at your house later this afternoon.

What are squirrels?

They are in Reno. Just there on vacation and they were everywhere. I think they were Boston squirrels on vacation.

Seriously, we don't have squirrels here.

Every once in a while, though, you'll see a red squirrel somewhere in the middle of the city, like my work parking lot in the central area of the city, someways removed from the Franklin Mountains that the city surrounds.

They are a brown Grey or white rodent with a long fluffy tail just a bit Smaller than a cat.

we have a lot of black squirrels here

saw a bunch today

Squirrels elicit mixed emotions over here. Most squirrels are grey, but their fairly recent arrivals having driven the native red squirrels out. There are areas like the Isle of Wight where the reds remain and there are other areas where they're starting to come back, but in most places the greys are the only ones you see.

Due to the above there are people, including my father, who hate grey squirrels with a vengeance. Any mention of them gets him frothing at the mouth and calling them rats.

He wants to kill all of them, and I'm not kidding, he really ******* hates them.

Now, I can consider the idea of a grey cull if we're talking about somewhere the reds are starting to come back. I live in the city, and there's no way reds are coming back here, it's completely unfeasible so I'll be nice to the greys, they've not done me any harm.

My dad's a bloody arsehole anyway. He really is.

I think the reds are cuter, but the greys are nice too.

Every now and again a squirrel decides to to hopping by some of my windows. Leaps from the fire-escape to a window sill, then jumps on the support brackets of the heating exhaust thing which runs up from the basement. Then hits another sill and I suppose goes to the next building (it's attached).

Occasionally one comes along who wants to get inside. Screens have kept them out thus far (although if I baked a pecan pie or roasted chestnuts they would probably shred the screen).

Last summer, I was alarmed because we had fewer squirrels, and those were gray squirrels. Where were the black squirrels? They were always dominant, always in the largest numbers? I wondered if they had north because of the warmer weather. (The autumn was so unseasonably warm, most trees still had their leaves when the first snow fell. Snow falls here before winter "officially" arrives.)

Not to worry, by the beginning of winter, the black squirrels were back, and few gray squirrels were to be seen. Maybe it is a new migration, I don't know. The craziest thing with squirrels was a gray squirrel in our back yard. i'd go outside, and find this squirrel staring at me. When I stared back, the squirrel would look off somewhere else, as though he (?) had not been staring. I could sit down out there and wait a few minutes, and then look over to find the squirrel staring at me again.

Maybe they are just nesting and raising the babies until they're big, mature, and hungry enough to go out on their own.

That happens in the spring, not early winter.

I've noticed many flowering trees confused by weather patterns, so maybe squirrels are as well.

I saw a few squirrels in VA when I was packing up my daughter in college - but I still have not seen any at home. I see lots of birds, turkeys and deer but no squirrels - not even road kill.

We have gray squirrels at my home. In the park we have red, black, and gray.

We usually have tons of gray squirrels - and usually some small red squirrels. For some reason this year I cannot remember seeing any. They typically torture my dogs by playing all over the yard where they can view while they are in the house - and it drives the dogs crazy.

The dogs have been quiet.

A neighbor may have poisoned them. I used to know a ninety year old man who used a pump air rifle to kill every one he could see.