THE RED SQUraOEL KLUGH 509 



diet of those of the North, because, firstly, there are few, if any, 

 localities where nut-bearing trees occur in which some species of 

 conifer does not occur and furnish part of the squirrels' food, and, 

 secondly, nowhere do nut-bearing trees form the dense, pure stands 

 that the spruce does in the north. Beechnuts, hickory nuts, black 

 walnuts, butternuts, chestnuts, and hazel nuts are all eaten both 

 fresh and stored wherever they occur. Bell (1898) says, " North- 

 ward of the zone of butternuts, and beechnuts, etc., the hazel extends 

 a long way — say, to a line drawn from Lake St. John (on the Sague- 

 nay) to Lake Athabaska, curving southward of James and Hudson 

 Bays — and affords a large proportion of their food." 



In the mixed forests of the Alleghanian faunal area the acorns of 

 the white, red, and burr oaks, and the keys of the sugar maple and 

 soft maple constitute a very considerable proportion of the food of 

 this species. 



In the spring the red squirrel eats the buds of a large number of 

 trees, both when they are swelling and when they are partially ex- 

 panded. It is probable that it takes the buds of any deciduous tree, 

 and of some conifers, such as the spruce, but the buds which I have 

 actually seen it eat are those of the sugar maple, soft maple, elm, 

 beech, ironwood, yellow birch, hybrid willow {Salix alba x fragills)^ 

 poplar {P. tremMloides) ^ and spruce, and the staminate catkins of 

 the tamarack and red oak. When feeding on buds of the sugar 

 maple and elm, and on the staminate strobili of the tamarack, I have 

 on several occasions seen squirrels hang down by their hind feet 

 from a twig to reach buds on the tips of the twigs beneath them, 

 usually pulling themselves up again to the branch above to eat the 

 bud, but sometimes consuming it while hanging head downward. 



In spring and early summer the red squirrel sometimes cuts off 

 leaves of the sugar and soft maples, eats part of the petiole, and 

 drops the rest of the leaf. 



The red squirrel eats the bark of the smaller branches of some 

 species of deciduous trees, especially that of the sugar maple, at all 

 seasons of the year, even in summer when green food is abundant. 

 It is thus not by any means entirely a " starvation ration," as has 

 been supposed, but is eaten apparently merely as a change from other 

 articjles of diet. Seton says that in IManitoba : " The third principal 

 food supply is the thinnest greenish outer bark of the quaking 

 aspen or poplar. This it does not store up, but gather as it is 

 needed in time of famine" and Burroughs (1900) says "But the 

 squirrels of this locality evidently got pretty hard up before spring, 

 for they developed a new source of food supply. A young, bushy- 

 topped maple, about 40 feet high, standing beside a stone fence near 

 the woods was attacked and more than half denuded of its bark. 

 The object of the squirrels seemed to be to get at the cambium 



