_Mustela rixosa_]
[Illustration: LARGE WEASEL, or STOAT (Winter and Summer)
_Mustela arcticus_] Apparently, as in the case of many other desert
mammals, the painted chipmunk, with its related races, is able to
subsist without drinking, since it is often seen far out on arid
plains many miles from the nearest water.
[Illustration: MARTEN, or AMERICAN SABLE
_Martes americana_]
[Illustration: AMERICAN MINK
_Mustela vison_]
As with all its kind, the world of the painted chipmunk is filled with
imminent peril of sudden death. Overhead, gliding on silent pinions,
are hawks of several species, while on the ground snakes, weasels,
badgers, bobcats, foxes, and coyotes are ever searching for them as
prey.
=THE RED SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus hudsonicus= and its relatives)
(_For illustration, see page 546_)
Every one who has visited the forests of Canada and northeastern
United States knows the vivacious, rollicking, and frequently impudent
red squirrel. This entertaining little beast, known also as the
pine squirrel and chickaree, has little of that woodland shyness so
characteristic of most forest animals. It often searches out the human
visitor to its haunts and from a low branch or tree trunk sputters,
barks, and scolds the intruder, working itself into a frenzy of
excitement. This habit, combined with the rusty red color and small
size of the animal, about half that of the gray squirrel, renders its
identity unmistakable. It has distinct winter and summer coats, but
in both the rusty red prevails. The winter dress is distinguished,
however, by small tufts on the ears.
The red squirrel, with its related small species, occupying most of
the wooded parts of North America north of Mexico, forms a strongly
characterized group, with no near kin among the squirrels of the Old
World. In its geographic races it ranges through the forests of all
Alaska and Canada and south to Idaho, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Wisconsin,
northern Indiana, all the Northeastern States to the District of
Columbia, and along the Alleghenies to South Carolina. Owing to its
small size, this animal, like the chipmunk, is considered too small
for game, although occasionally hunted for sport. As a consequence its
increase or decrease is usually governed by the available food supply,
although man interferes locally when it becomes too destructive.
This squirrel shows a strong preference for coniferous forests, whether
of hemlock, spruce, fir, or pine, but may be common in woods where
conifers are few and widely scattered. Although usually diurnal and
busily occupied from sunrise until sunset, it sometimes continues its
activities during moonlight nights, especially when nuts are ripe and
it is time to gather winter stores. During warm, pleasant days in
spring and fall, when the nights are cool, it often lies at full length
along the tops of large branches during the middle of the day, basking
in the grateful warmth of the sun.
The nests, which are located in a variety of situations, are made of
twigs, leaves, or moss, and lined with fibrous bark and other soft
material. Some are in knot-holes or other hollows in trees, others
may be built outside on limbs near the trunk, and still others are
in burrows made in the ground under roots, stumps, logs, brush heaps,
or other cover offering secure refuge. Apparently several litters, of
young, containing from four to six, are born each season, as they have
been found from April to September.
They do not hibernate, but are active throughout the year, except
during some of the coldest and most inclement weather. To provide
against the season of scarcity, they accumulate at the base of a tree,
under the shelter of a log, or other cover, great stores of pine,
spruce, or other cones, sometimes in heaps containing from six to
ten bushels. They also hide scattered cones here and there and place
stores of beechnuts, corn, and other seeds in hollows or underground
store-rooms. They are fond of edible mushrooms and sometimes lay up
half a bushel of them among the branches of trees or bushes to dry for
winter use. In the western mountains their great stores of pine cones
are often robbed by seed-gatherers for forestry nurseries. In winter
they tunnel through the snow to their hidden stores and sometimes
continue the tunnels from one store to another.
Each squirrel makes its home for a long period in or about a certain
tree. There he carries his cones to extract the seeds, and on the
ground beneath it the accumulation of fallen scales and centers of
cones sometimes amounts to fifteen or twenty bushels. In addition to
the seeds of the various conifers, red squirrels eat many kinds of
fruits and seeds; they also raid cornfields and orchards and even make
nests in barns and woodsheds to be near the food supply which some
farmer’s industry has collected.
Red squirrels have the interesting habit of voluntarily swimming
streams and lakes, including such bodies of water as Lake George and
even the broadest parts of Lake Champlain. When they thus cross the
water and make their migrations, there is little doubt that they are
usually in search of a better feeding ground.
The red squirrels and related species have the greatest variety
of notes possessed by any of the American members of the squirrel
family. In addition to the barking, scolding, chattering notes already
mentioned, they have a real song, which is one of the most attractive
of woodland notes. It is a long-drawn series of musical rolling or
churring notes, varied at times by cadences and having a ventriloquial
quality rendering it difficult to locate. These notes never fail to
awaken pleasurable emotions and to recall to me my early boyhood in the
Adirondacks, where the spring songs of the chickarees were among the
first calls which awakened me to the marvelous beauties of nature.
The worst trait of the red squirrel and one which largely overbalances
all his many attractive qualities is his thoroughly proved habit of
eating the eggs and young of small birds. During the breeding season
he spends a large part of his time in predatory nest hunting, and
the number of useful and beautiful birds he thus destroys must be
almost incalculable. The number of red squirrels is very great over
a continental area, and one close observer believes each squirrel
destroys 200 birds a season. Practically all species of northern
warblers, vireos, thrushes, chickadees, nuthatches, and others are
numbered among their victims. The notable scarcity of birds in northern
forests may be largely due to these handsome but vicious marauders.
In the fur country these squirrels are much disliked by the trappers
for their constant interference with meat-baited traps. Many fall
victims to their carnivorous desires, but their places are soon taken
by others.
The energy and unfailing variety in the performances of red squirrels
always keep the attention of their human neighbors. Among other
interesting activities, their pursuit of one another up and down and
around the trunks of trees, over the ground, along logs, back and forth
in the most reckless abandon, is most entertaining to watch. These
pursuits among the young are playful and harmless, but among the males
in spring are of the most deadly character. I have seen the victim go
up and down tree after tree, shrieking in fear and agony and leaving a
trail of blood on the snow as he tried to escape his truculent pursuer.
Such scenes as this, combined with our knowledge of its bird-killing
habits, appear belied by the exquisite grace and beauty of this
squirrel as it sits on a branch and sends its musical cadences trilling
through the primeval forest. So confirmed are red squirrels in the
destruction of bird life, however, they should not be permitted to
become very numerous anywhere and it may eventually become necessary to
outlaw them wherever found.
=THE DOUGLAS SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus douglasi= and its relatives)
(_For illustration, see page 546_)
In all details of size, form, notes, and habits the Douglas squirrel
gives testimony to its descent from the same ancestral stock as the
common red squirrel (_Sciurus hudsonicus_). The typical Douglas
squirrel, represented in the accompanying illustration, is one of
several geographic races of a species which ranges from the Cascades
and Sierra Nevada to the Pacific, and from British Columbia south to
the San Pedro Martir Mountains of Lower California. The home of the
Douglas squirrel is amid the wonderful coniferous forests of western
Oregon, Washington, and southern British Columbia. As in other mammals
of this extremely humid region, the colors of its upperparts are dark
brown, in strong contrast to the much paler and grayer colors of
the closely related subspecies living in the clearer and more arid
climate of the Sierra Nevada in California. These squirrels are known
locally by a variety of common names, including pine squirrel, redwood
squirrel, and “drummer.”
Although usually not quite so noisy and self-assertive as the
irrepressible little red blusterer of eastern forests, the Douglas
squirrel is also notable for its rollicking, chattering character and
sometimes cannot be outdone in its amusing displays of aggressive
impudence. When the animals are numerous the air at times resounds with
their call notes or songs, one answering the other, now near and now
far, until the somber depths of the mighty forest seems peopled with a
multitude of these joyous furry sprites. Their song, resembling that
of the red squirrel, is a rapid trilling or bubbling series of notes,
long drawn out and sometimes varied by cadences. It is so musical that
it seems more like the song of some strange bird than of a mammal. When
these squirrels are not common they are much less given to song and
seem subdued and shy, as though impressed by the vast loneliness of
their deep forest haunts.
At mating time, early in spring, they are especially noisy, and again
in summer when the first litter of young are out trying their youthful
pipes in expression of their cheerful well being. They frequently come
down on a low branch or on the trunk of a tree and chatter, bark, and
scold at man, dog, or other intruder, now rushing up and down, or
making little dashes around the tree trunk, their necks outstretched
and tails flirting with a great show of anger and contempt highly
entertaining to see. They are restlessly active at all seasons of
the year and habitually chase one another through the forest with an
appearance of rollicking fun which may many times be in more deadly
earnest than appears to the casual observer.
In winter their tracks in the snow lead from tree to tree, along the
tops of logs and fences, and in all directions to hidden stores of
food, which they appear to be able to locate with unerring certainty
under the snow. An adventurous spirit leads them to race away from the
forest, along fence-tops, to pay visits to ranch buildings and even
to villages and small towns. Like their eastern relative, the Douglas
squirrels are omnivorous, feeding on the seeds of all the conifers in
their range, including spruces, firs, pines, and redwoods, and also
upon acorns, and a great variety of other seeds, fruits, and mushrooms,
insects, birds’ eggs, young birds, and any other meat they can find.
Owing to their habit of interfering with meat-baited traps, they are
a nuisance to trappers. They frequently visit orchards and carry off
apples and pears, from which they extract the seeds. They have been
seen also to visit the wounds made on a willow trunk by sapsuckers to
drink the flowing sap. Their feet and the fur about their mouths are
often much gummed with pitch from working on pine cones.
[Illustration: LITTLE SPOTTED SKUNK
_Spilogale putorius_]
[Illustration: COMMON SKUNK
_Mephitis mephitis_]
In many places the soft, moist earth in the woods is riddled with
little pits dug by these squirrels apparently when they are after larvæ
or perhaps edible roots. Throughout the summer, but especially during
the last half of the season, and in autumn Douglas squirrels work with
persistent energy to amass great stores of seed-bearing cones, which
they heap, sometimes bushels of them, about the bases of trees, stumps,
and the upturned roots of fallen trees or under other shelter. Cones
are also buried here and there in the loose leaves and humus. In winter
many holes in the snow with piles of cone scales at the entrances show
where the owners have dug down to their stores.
[Illustration: HOG-NOSED SKUNK
_Conepatus mesoleucus_]
[Illustration: NINE-BANDED ARMADILLO
_Dasypus novemcincta_]
Some of their nests are constructed in hollow trees, many others on
branches near their junction with the trunks, and still others in
underground dens under roots, logs, or stumps. In winter when alarmed
these squirrels sometimes race down the tree trunks and take refuge in
holes leading through the snow to their food caches and underground
burrows. The nests built in tree-tops are usually rather bulky,
measuring a foot or more in diameter, and are made of small twigs, dry
leaves, moss, grass, and fibrous bark. They are commonly lined with
such soft material as feathers and fur. The young, numbering three to
seven at a litter, are born at any time between April and October.
The extraordinary intelligence and sense of prevision possessed by
squirrels of this group is well illustrated by certain local food
migrations. These have been observed in eastern Oregon in years when
the cone crop has failed and nothing was available to lay up for
winter. Under such conditions to remain in the mountain forests would
mean death by starvation before winter had fairly begun. In 1910 and
1913 failure of the cone crop occurred in eastern Oregon and these
squirrels promptly left the mountain forests in September and descended
along creek courses to the open sagebrush plains as much as seven or
more miles from the border of their ordinary haunts. In this open
country they wintered successfully, raiding the farmers’ grain bins,
root cellars, and other stores, and otherwise showing their supreme
fitness to survive in the struggle for existence. With the coming
again of summer they promptly returned to their abandoned homes in the
pines. It appears to be one of the marvels of animal intelligence that
under such circumstances as those named above the entire body of the
squirrels on the mountains should have known what to do, especially as
a great percentage of their number could never have had any previous
experience as a guide.
=THE GRAY SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus carolinensis= and its relatives)
(_For illustration, see page 547_)
The gray squirrel is so well known to everyone in the Eastern States
that it scarcely needs an introduction. Many who have not seen it in
its native haunts are familiar with it as a graceful and charming
resident of parks in many cities. It is about twice as large as the
red squirrel and intermediate in size between that species and the fox
squirrel. Although sharing some of the range of both the species named,
the color of the gray squirrel at once distinguishes it.
The gray squirrel is a North American species with no near relative in
the Old World; on the Pacific coast, in the mountains of the Southwest,
and in Mexico are other squirrels having much the same gray-colored
body, but with no close relationship to it. Its range covers the
deciduous forests of the Eastern States and southern Canada from Nova
Scotia to Florida, and westward to the border of the treeless Great
Plains. Wherever they occur these squirrels are an attractive element
in the woodland life, their barking and chattering, their graceful
forms, and their activity adding greatly to the cheerful animation of
the forest. They are far less vociferous than red squirrels, but their
notes are varied and serve to express a variety of meanings.
During the early settlement of the country west of the States bordering
the coast, gray squirrels existed in great numbers and often made
ruinous inroads on the pioneer corn and wheat fields. In 1749 they
invaded Pennsylvania in such hosts that a bounty of three pence each
was put on their scalps. Eight thousand pounds sterling was paid on
this account, which involved the killing of 640,000 squirrels. In 1808
a law in force in Ohio required that each free white male deliver 100
squirrel scalps a year or pay $3 in cash. Records of the ravages of
these squirrels in corn fields are extant also from Kentucky, Missouri,
and other States.
Enormous migrations of gray squirrels from one part of the country
to another occurred in those days, caused apparently by the failure
of food supplies in the deserted areas. Some impulse to move in one
general direction at the same time appeared to affect the squirrels and
they swarmed across country in amazing numbers, carrying devastation
to any farms crossed on the way. When engaged in such movements they
appeared indifferent to obstacles and without hesitation swam lakes
and streams even as large as the Hudson and the Ohio. Amusing legends
grew up concerning these migrations, one of which avers that when the
squirrels arrived on a river bank each dragged a large chip or piece of
bark into the water and mounting it raised its bushy tail in the breeze
and was wafted safely to the other shore! As a fact, many were drowned
in crossing large streams and others arrived exhausted from their
exertions.
The gray and fox squirrels were favorite targets for pioneer marksmen.
The early chronicles tell of the ability of Daniel Boone and other
riflemen to “bark” a squirrel, which meant so to cut the bark of the
branch on which the squirrel sat as to bring it to the ground stunned
without hitting the animal. With the clearing away of the forests,
the general occupation of the country, and the decrease of larger
animals, gray squirrels have been deprived of most of their haunts and
have become such desirable game that they have decreased to a point
requiring stringent legal protection to save them from extermination.
Gray squirrels are more thoroughly arboreal than red squirrels and
make their nests either in hollow trunks or build them in the tops of
trees. These outside nests are common and much like a crow’s nest in
appearance except that they are generally more bulky and show more dead
leaves. They are built on a foundation of small sticks with a rounded
top of leaves, and are lined with shreds of bark, moss, and similar
soft material. In the extreme northern part of their range they live
mainly in hollow trees, but farther south many winter in outside nests.
During severe cold and in stormy weather they remain hidden, sometimes
for days at a time.
They have two litters of four to six young a year, the first usually
being born in March or April. The old squirrel is a devoted mother and
if the nest is disturbed she will at once carry the young to some safer
retreat.
In many parts of their range black, or melanistic, individuals are born
in litters otherwise of the ordinary gray color. In some districts the
number of the black squirrels equals or exceeds the gray ones.
Gray squirrels range through such a variety of climatic conditions
that their food varies greatly. They eat practically all available
nuts, including acorns, chestnuts, beechnuts, hickory-nuts, and pecans,
besides numberless seeds, many small fruits, and mushrooms. They raid
fields for corn and wheat, and steal apples, pears, and quinces from
orchards to eat the seeds. Like most other small rodents, they are fond
of larvæ and insects and also destroy many birds’ eggs and young birds.
They are far less serious offenders, however, in destroying birds than
the red squirrel.
On the approach of winter they lay up stores of seeds and nuts in
holes in trees and in little hiding places on the ground. Many nuts
are hidden away singly. In the public parks of Washington, where many
gray squirrels exist, I have repeatedly seen them dig a little pit
two or three inches deep, then push a nut well down it cover it with
earth, which they press firmly in place with the front feet, and then
pull loose grass over the spot. One squirrel will have many such hidden
nuts, and with nothing to mark the location it appears impossible that
they could be recovered. That the squirrels knew what they were doing
I have had repeated evidence in winter, even with several inches of
snow on the ground, when they have been seen sniffing along the top of
the snow, suddenly stop, dig down and unearth a nut with a precision
that demonstrates the marvelous delicacy of their sense of smell.
Although mainly diurnal, they are sometimes abroad on moonlight nights,
especially when gathering stores of food for winter.
Wherever they are, these squirrels are extremely graceful, moving
along the ground by curving bounds, the long fluffy tail undulating
as they go, or running through the tree-tops, leaping from branch to
branch with an ease and certainty beautiful to see. When pressed they
make amazing leaps from tree to tree or even from a high tree-top to
the ground without injury. They are extremely cunning at concealing
themselves by lying flat on top of branches or by gliding around tree
trunks, keeping them interposed between themselves and the pursuer.
Gray squirrels are so responsive to protection that they may continue
to grace our remaining forests if we properly guard them. In addition
to their beauty, they are interesting game animals which should
continue to afford a moderate amount of sport--sufficient to prevent
them from becoming overabundant and destructive. Now introduced in
many city parks throughout the United States and in parts of England,
including London, their ready acceptance of people as friends renders
them charming animals in such places; but natural food is so scarce
under these artificial conditions that care must be taken to feed them
at all seasons, especially in winter.
=THE FOX SQUIRREL= (=Sciurus niger= and its relatives)
(_For illustration, see page 547_)