Red Squirrel: Tchick Tchick Tchick
The Great Outdoors | November 1, 2024
By Jackie Scharfenberg, Retired DNR Naturalist, Photo by: Cephas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“Tchick-tchick-tchick!” “Tcher-r-r-r!” Did you hear my scolding, and see my tail flicking and my foot stomping? That’s my way of saying GET OUT of my territory!
Other American red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) are not even allowed. I prefer to live alone! Since it seems I won’t be able to chase you away, let me give you a brief lesson about red squirrels.
Appearance
We sport a reddish brown/gray band that runs from our heads to the tips of our tails. A black stripe separates our olive gray sides from our white bellies. In winter the back band gets brighter while the black side stripe becomes less obvious. Check out our white eye rings. We also grow blackish ear tufts for winter. A typical red squirrel measures 11-14 inches long with almost half that length being its tail. Our small size and reddish color distinguish us from those other tree squirrels – gray and fox.
Habitat
We prefer to live in coniferous (evergreen) woods or mixed coniferous/deciduous forests, but in the southern part of Wisconsin, we will inhabit pure deciduous woodlands. Whatever the forest type, it needs an interlocking canopy. Within a territory, we establish several dens and caches. Tree cavities make the best den sites, but when we can’t find any, we build basketball-sized nests of leaves, twigs, moss, and/or grass high in a tree. The inside measures about five inches in diameter (a bit larger than a softball) and we pad it with shredded bark, moss or pine needles. Sometimes, we may make nests on the ground or underground, especially in winter in places where we have stored food.
Diet
We are diurnal (active during the day), quite energetic, and very vocal. This makes us easy to find.
People call us granivores, meaning we eat a lot of seeds. Our favorites include seeds extracted from cones of spruce, fir, larch, hemlock, and pine. You may find a large pile of cone scales (a midden) beneath a lofty feeding perch. We also consume walnuts, acorns, hazelnuts and other nuts. In spring and summer, we eat large quantities of buds, seeds, fruit, mushrooms, and even maple sugar. In the spring, we bite through the sugar maple’s bark and then leave. The sap oozes from the openings and then after a couple of days it dries leaving behind maple sugar which we eagerly gobble up. We also prey on insects, eggs, birds, mice, voles, and young rabbits, more so than the other squirrels.
As winter approaches, we spend more hours each day collecting food. We store our food in either one large cache/midden or several throughout our territories. These may be next to a tree trunk or underground. We use our great sense of smell to find them even under deep snow.
I must get back to filling my caches for winter. Just know that the next red squirrel you run across may not be as friendly as me. “Tcher-r-r-r,” now leave before I get a bad reputation with the other red squirrels!
