Getting Ready for Winter

The road is separated from a field by a row of large old trees, many of them with cavities – holes where birds like the white-breasted nuthatch nest and gray squirrels have a snug place to spend the winter. For a naturalist it’s always worthwhile to take a look at these cavities, you never know what might be there.

One of the white oaks along the road had a large horizontal limb where a branch had died, decayed and left a hole. A close look at that hole revealed leaves and hair hanging out.

In a matter of seconds a head emerged – a gray squirrel –

And then the rest of the young squirrel emerged, quickly followed by a second young one and both of them climbed atop the limb –

The second animal proceeded to bite its sibling repeatedly –

Meanwhile the adult female was gathering leaves and taking them into the hole to make a cozy nest for winter –

One of the young ones that hadn’t quite learned how to make a nest repeatedly tried to take a leafless twig into the cavity – but it wouldn’t fit –

Perhaps you noticed the wound on the adult squirrel, here’s a better photo; it looks like the biting offspring may have taken a hunk out of its mother –

A little further along another gray squirrel was peering from a hole in a contorted red oak –

It soon ran down the tree and over to a stonerow where the wind had made a pile of leaves; the squirrel proceeded to gather a mouthful of leaves –

Up the tree it went and into the cavity in the tree –

Leaves insulate a tree cavity quite well; on the coldest of winter days squirrels often don’t emerge from their cozy dens insulated with dry leaves.

Gray squirrels also build leaf nests high in trees if there aren't enough tree cavities available. Those leaf nests aren't a good place to spend cold winter nights so gray squirrels prefer cavities in trees; but they compete with flying squirrels, woodpeckers, nuthatches and other birds and mammals for any available cavities.  

In woodlands composed primarily of young trees there aren't enough cavities to go around, so it's wise to save any tree with a usable cavity; trees that are hollow from the ground up don't count.