Reader Anne-Marie Cournoyer of Montreal, who lately has specialized in photographing squirrels, sends us an early warning from her northern outpost:
Squirrel of the day says: be ready for the winter. No snow yet, but it’s coming!!!
Professor Ceiling Cat (Emeritus) adds: There is beauty all around you, no less in the squirrels than in the flowers. Pay attention to our friends in the Sciuridae, and give them sustenance for the winter.
How do you serve your squirrel of the day? I like mine medium rare.
That’s not funny at all, not terribly original, and offensive to us squirrel lovers. I sincerely hope you will reconsider your position
I fully endorse your reply, definitely not original or even slightly amusing.
Here in Canada in our 2+ acre garden we are most fortunate to enjoy (and assist) a wealth of wild life from beaver in our brook to healthy numbers of red squirrel who share the bird feeders all year around and are a pleasure to behold.
I always wanted to know what kind of degenerate would want to eat a squirrel so I checked out your profile. When I saw “philosophy of mathematics” in there I knew.
A would say “mad woman”! But here I am in rural Somerset UK, a week before Christmas, in deep mid winter, smelling the roses in my garden, still awaiting the first frost, whilst admiring the budding crocuses and daffodils the first harbingers of spring?
The only mad people are the attendees of the recent climate change conference in Paris; whom thanks yet again to morons from the USA, have for the thirtieth year in a row achieved “Fuck All”
Must dash have got to attend to my new collection of agave cactus.
Great pic! I’ve never noticed the white tufts behind the ears before. I will be inspecting the squirrels around here to see if they have tufts too.
Nice portrait. That specimen hasn’t missed many meals.
I won’t be giving any sustenance to the Sciuridae in our pastures. The gophers are not very friendly to the horses or garden.
Gophers aren’t sciurids, though!
Sorry, should have been more “biological”. “Gopher” is one of those terms that means different things in different places. Our nemesis is Urocitellus columbianus, or Citellus columbianus in my apparently outdated Peterson field guide, the Columbian ground squirrel (is italicisation possible on this site?). I squashed one in our garden last summer, but most of them just peep at me from their holes. I’m hoping the cat will mature into a predator of more than grasshoppers.
As you can see, it was a windy day. And he was wondering where I had put the peanuts this time…
Yes, his posture does betray the peanut wondering. And I can see the wind in (?)his fur now that you mention it.
that’s just so damn pretty. I do put out some treats for our local population of gray squirrels. We live near an old high school that has many many oaks, and one singular hickory tree. The squirrels love the hickory nuts and my parents brought them a couple of gallons from the ridiculous number of hickory trees on the farm.
I like squirrels, and I don’t have a problem with people feeding them, but is there really any need to? They don’t exactly seem to be struggling. And of course, in Britain, the brash American grey interlopers have pushed our pretty native reds to the margins of our isle, so feeding them seems somehow unpatriotic.
Good luck with that. Introductions rarely go well. Thanks for the starlings (although I do like them – few birds have their vocal range).
http://i-csrs.com/red-squirrels-decline
In the course of centuries red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) many times experienced very sudden population losses in the UK. The main reason of such variation in red squirrel population in the UK was the destruction of their habitat and mass hunting that resulted in their almost total extinction in the UK already in 18th century and the necessity for their re-introduction from the continent (Ritchie 1920, Gurnell 1987, Harris et al. 2006). In the last 150 years for this reason red squirrels had to be introduced in various areas in the UK from the continent – mostly from Sweden and central Europe (Ritchie 1920, Lowe & Gardiner 1983, Yalden 1999, Hale et al. 2004, Harris et al. 2006). It led to the situation – as confirmed by DNA study (Hale et al. 2004) – that the vast majority of red squirrel population currently living in the UK are descendants of squirrels recently introduced from Scandinavia – often long after the introduction of grey squirrels to the UK (Hale et al. 2004, Harris et al. 2006).
Very nice yellow background.
Diana says that squirrel is fat but don’t body shame him!
I won’t tell him!!
He’s circumferentially enabled.
Dat’s a phat squirrel!
Cute squirrel! I feed my squirrels and they are fat and sassy!
Nice pic. Oh, I do love squirrels. I solved the problem of their getting into the bird feeder and eating most of the bird seed by renaming it a “squirrel feeder” and happily noting that they always seem to leave a morsel or two for the birds.
My daughter has been living in South Carolina for the last 7 years or so and when she came up to Wisconsin last Christmas she broke out laughing when she saw the squirrels. “Whoa! They’re so FAT! Look at the size of them! They’re round.”
She’d kinda forgotten what winter squirrels look like in the north. Winter squirrels in the south look the same as they do in the summer.