The Gray Squirrel £27 
severe they are abroad during the winter. However, 
the gray squirrel, in common with most of our other 
squirrels, has the habit of digging holes and hiding 
a nut or two here and there. It has been argued that 
this is an idle pastime, and that nuts so concealed in 
many places could never again be located by the 
squirrel, but it must be remembered that the sense of 
smell in the squirrel is very acute, probably guiding 
the animal far more than memory. It must be this 
wonderful sense of smell that directs the squirrel 
where to dig in the snow, securing from beneath the 
leaves the nuts that were buried weeks before; or 
that guides him to a solitary nut tree or to the grain 
in a barn. 
This stored food constitutes only a part of the 
gray squirrel’s winter supply. ‘The other part he must 
scurry about to find. The beech trees and some 
others do not drop all of their nuts at the approach 
of winter. There still hang a few solitary nuts on 
each tree, and through a large beech forest the number 
so left is considerable. But the gray squirrel is not 
the only claimant for the nuts: the red squirrels and 
the red headed woodpeckers demanding for themselves 
the lion’s share. The birds seem to think that these 
nuts are exclusively their property, and vigorously do 
they protest if a squirrel appears, One determined 
