We 'enjoyed' a rather cool, grey day yesterday, not ideal conditions for photographing squirrels going about their autumn business - which means, mostly, collecting and hiding nuts. This one, pictured from our kitchen window, spent some time trying to get at the peanuts which were in the white plastic tube, a contraption invented to provide peanuts exclusively to the tit tribe.
What the squirrel failed to work out was that it had spent some time sitting on the contraption designed exclusively for our red squirrel population, so that they can see the food through the plastic window at the front and then access it by lifting the lid.... which it's sitting on. Maybe at some point it'll work it out.
A little deeper in the forestry we came across this squirrel which was furious that it had been disturbed while going about it's business which - look closely - is to take some hazel nuts from a commercially-made feeder very similar to mine and carry them off for burial somewhere, hopefully, which it'll remember in deep, dark winter.
There are various statistics on the internet which suggest that squirrels forget the location of over 50% of the nuts they bury. This may be good for the trees which grow as a result but it's pretty tough on the squirrels particularly when another statistic suggests that the average squirrel buries over 3,000 nuts each season: that's a minimum of 1,500 lost nuts.
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