Habits of Maine Red Squirrels. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Every one knows the red squirrel, but very 
few know him intimately. Probably there are 
few creatures so common of which there is so 
little accurate knowledge. 
It is a generally received opinion that the 
red squirrel makes no provision for winter. 
But with us he lays up large stores of the cones 
of pine and spruce and knows the exact season 
when they are fit to cut for his use. If cut too 
early they will be sealed closely with pitch: if 
cut too late the winged seeds will have escaped. 
The red squirrel cuts them by the hundreds the 
last of September, just when the sticky covering 
has hardened into drops of stiff pitch and just 
before the cones have opened. One who is in 
the pine woods then will hear the dull, heavy 
thud as they fall, and if he gets a close view of 
the squirrel, will see that his paws and face are 
smeared with pitch. 
These cones the squirrel carries to some safe 
hiding place, usually under stumps or logs, or 
sometimes in little thickets or seedling pines or 
spruces, often piling several hundreds in a place. 
One squirrel will have several such deposits to 
which he will resort in the late fall and winter. 
Many persons suppose that a squirrel picks up 
any cone he happens to find on the ground: but 
in fact he takes only those which he or some 
other squirrel has cut earlier in the season, as 
cones which have fallen of themselves contain 
no seed and are of no more use than a corn cob 
after the corn has been shelled off. 
The squirrel knows exactly how .to get the 
seed with the least labor. A squirrel wishing 
to eat a cone, sits up on his hind feet, standing 
the cone up before him on its small end. Then 
he cuts off the upper scale at the butt of the 
cone. These scales do not run in straight lines, 
but are arranged spirally, with a seed under 
each scale. The seeds in a white pine cone are 
about the size and shape of a small apple seed; 
those of a spruce, about as large as seeds of 
turnip or mustard. Both kinds have a wing 
which serves to carry the seed often to long 
distances, when it falls naturally from the cone. 
The squirrel eats the first seed, then gives the 
cone a slight turn and cuts the next scale, and 
so keeps turning and eating until the central 
pith is in his way, when he cuts it off and con¬ 
tinues eating until near the end of the cone, 
which he always leaves, as he knows that the 
seeds there are too small and poor to be of use 
to him. 
After the squirrel has gathered his cones, if 
it is a beech-nut year, he will cut off large quan¬ 
tities of the beech burrs before the nuts are 
ready to fall: but I have never known him to 
§tore the beech nuts. These cut burrs are used 
for food until the frost opens the burrs on the 
tree, and then the squirrel feeds on those which 
have fallen naturally. In the same way they 
both eat acorns from the tree and pick them 
up from the ground, yet I have never seen them 
store acorns. Although I have seen squirrels 
stripping the outside covering from butternuts, 
which they seemed to be gathering for later use. 
as this was not in Maine, and we have no 
butternuts in this vicinity, I have never had an 
opportunity to make sure that they stored the 
nuts. 
With us, after the acorns and beech nuts are 
gone, the squirrels resort to their garnered 
cones. If an ice storm comes and makes a crust 
too hard for them to penetrate, they will at 
once begin to feed on the mast of white birch, 
or in lack of that, will eat the buds of hard¬ 
wood trees. One winter a squirrel staid all 
winter under or in a neighbor’s barn, living en¬ 
tirely on the buds of elm trees. For weeks he 
was eating them every day when the weather 
was fair. In stormy weather he sometimes did 
not appear for several days at a time. With a 
strong field glass we could determine surely 
that he was eating the tree-buds. This is the 
only case where I have known one to subsist 
entirely on b'uds for any length of time. 
Whenever the thermometer gets up to about 
35 degrees above zero, the squirrels begin to tap 
the maples for sap. Usually they do not begin 
until the last of March, but I have seen them 
doing it in January and February, when the 
weather was unusually warm. Sprouts and 
small trees they tap near the ground, but large 
trees high up, as the bark is thin there and it 
is less work to penetrate it. I used to suppose 
that they sucked the sap, but later I found that 
they lapped it, except in some cases where they 
had tapped a right-angled limb, when they hung 
under it and let it drop into their mouths. 
When the birds are nesting the squirrels are 
busy studying oology. They are very expert in 
finding birds’ nests and can cover a large piece 
of country in a day. It makes no odds to a 
squirrel wdiether the eggs are fresh-laid or ready 
to hatch; all kinds of birds’ eggs are acceptable 
and any young birds up to the size of a robin 
are a welcome feast. From a nest close to a 
house in a city I have known one to take four 
young robins which were nearly ready to fly. 
It is a very common thing for them to come 
into gardens in town, as more nests can be 
found near houses than in the deep woods. 
Though a rodent, few animals are more fond 
of meat than a red squirrel. They will eat any 
kind of meat or fish as quickly as a cat and will 
live on it days when a chance offers. I have 
often had them eat each other when one was in 
a trap. Around camps where provisions are 
stored they are great pests. Their sense of 
smell must be very acute, as I have seen where 
one gnawed a large hole through a new over¬ 
coat to get at a bottle of coffee which one of 
my men had rolled up inside to keep it warm. 
The squirrel must have smelled it through all 
the folds of the thick cloth. 
Where not troubled they soon become very 
tame, often coming into a camp and stealing 
biscuit or ginger bread from the table. I have 
seen those which certainly could tell one per¬ 
son from another, as they would let one who 
had never molested them come very near, while, 
when a person who had stoned them appeared, 
they would instantly dodge into a hole. 
When irritated a red squirrel can come the 
nearest to being profane of any animal I ever 
saw. One day when still-hunting I happened to 
stop under a large beech. Soon the burrs be¬ 
gan to drop, and, wishing to rest, I began 
shelling and eating the beech nuts. I had been 
doing this for some time, when the supply 
ceased and the squirrel came down to look 
after his nuts. On seeing me where he expected 
to find the nuts, he flew into the greatest fit of 
passion I ever saw any animal indulge in. He 
was so enraged that he lost all sense of fear 
and stood head down on the tree within arm’s 
length of me, calling me all the vile names the 
squirrel vocabulary is capable of. It was per¬ 
fectly evident that he was using language which 
would not look well in print. I tried to reason 
with him, told him that there were nuts enough 
for both, that he was the spryest and could get 
more; but it was no use. I had taken his nuts, 
and he abused me so that I was obliged to leave 
him, still using language strong enough to 
walk on. 
In our cedar swamps one often sees small¬ 
sized trees whose outer bark for several feet up 
looks as if it had been torn or shredded off. 
This is done by red squirrels in getting nesting 
material. I have seen a squirrel when doing 
this take the end of a piece of bark in his mouth 
and then by bracing off with his fore paws tear 
out a strip several inches long. By holding on 
with one fore foot and using the other as a 
hand, he would draw in the ends and tuck them 
in his mouth. Thus stripping off other shreds 
and arranging them in his mouth until he had 
all that he could carry, he would convey his 
load to the place where he was making his nest, 
being careful to start off in a direction opposite 
to the one where he intended to go, and. not 
until he supposed that he was out of sight, 
circling round to his objective point. 
While the gray squirrel builds a nest of leaves 
in summer, I have always seen the reds gather¬ 
ing their material late in the fall. Speaking of 
gray squirrels, I have always heard that the 
reds would always drive the grays away from 
their vicinity. How this may be in other states 
where the grays are plentiful, I do not know; 
but in this part of Maine, where grays are not 
common and where most of them are found 
in restricted areas where acorns are plenty or 
there are cornfields, I have never seen any 
signs of one species troubling the other. After 
observing both kinds for over sixty years. I 
have always found reds wherever there were 
grays, each kind living as peaceably with the 
other as it did with its own species. I have 
often seen grays chasing each other, and reds 
doing the same; but never saw a red in pursuit 
of a gray or vice versa. 
I do not know at what time the young are 
born, but it must be when the weather is quite 
cold. Once, when trout fishing in June. I 
looked into a hollow in a large standing elm. 
The bottom of the hole was filled with fine 
