THE RED SQUIRREL KLUGH 517 



Nelson (1918) says: "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. One 

 close observer believes that each squirrel destroys 200 birds a year." 



The passages cited above, and many others of similar purport in 

 ornithological literature, would lead one to believe that the red squir- 

 rel is a serious menace to bird life. But there is another side to the 

 picture. Seton says : " Nevertheless there is a remarkable individ- 

 uality shown among squirrels in this particular, A family of five 

 lived in a grove of six or seven small trees near my house. In this 

 grove a yellow-throated vireo reared her young under the squirrels' 

 very noses. They must have seen the birds, yet did them no harm. 

 William Brewster has described to me a similar case in which he 

 saw the squirrels leap daily over a robin's nest, but offer no harm to 

 the eggs or the callow young." Thorns (1922) under the title "Are 

 Squirrels Bird Enemies?" answers this question in the negative, cit- 

 ing a case of a red squirrel pouncing on a mourning dove on her 

 nest and when she flew off eating the eggs, and of a squirrel throw- 

 ing young orioles out of their nest, as the only two cases of squirrels 

 molesting birds in his ornithological experience of 20 years, and con- 

 cludes that " depredations perpetrated by red squirrels do not lessen 

 in any appreciable degree the number of birds." Cram (1901) says, 

 " The red squirrel has been generally accused of being an inveterate 

 robber of birds' nests, and I am afraid there is a good deal of ground 

 for the accusation; still, I have never observed him plundering a 

 nest, nor do the small birds generally exhibit any great alarm or 

 anxiety at his presence in the proximity of their homes." To this 

 I can add that in 25 years ornithological experience, and in 8 j^ears 

 rather intensive study of the red squirrel, I have not come across 

 a case of depredations on nests by squirrels, but on the other hand 

 I have seen three cases where broods of robins were successfully 

 raised in places which a red squirrel visited every day. 



Summing up this matter, the facts appear to be as follows: The 

 red squirrel does, more or less frequently, eat both birds' eggs and 

 young birds. People who happen to witness such attacks are usually 

 interested mainly in birds, and often especially in the particular pair 

 whose nest is raided, so that the occurrence makes a deep impression. 

 Any such estimate as " each squirrel destroys 200 birds a year " is, to 

 say the least, a gross exaggeration, as at this rate the number of birds 

 in localities where squirrels are abundant would be seriously reduced, 

 which is not the case. Birds and squirrels have existed together in 

 North America long before man came on the scene, and the settlement 

 of the country has not rendered conditions more favorable to squir- 

 rels and less so to birds, but, if anything, the other way round. It is 



24034—29—34 



