Squirreling Away

Since we moved to this house around ten years ago, we've been visited by a succession of squirrels which seem to have made their home in the neighbour's huge copper beech tree. Over the years, their number has fluctuated, but thanks to two harsh winters and the efforts of our neighbour to rid us of their presence, the number has reduced to one -- although today a newcomer was also to be seen. Squirrels are cute, although the grey variety, which is all that we have in most of the UK, is an assertive animal which has succeeded in driving the native red squirrel to a few isolated enclaves. The assertiveness of the grey squirrel is well demonstrated in our visitor's attempts to get at the fat balls which are suspended in a small cage from our prunus tree, for the benefit of the bird life. All birds and wild animals such as squirrels desire fat to keep them alive during the winter, and in the period February to May, when other sources of food tend to be in short supply, before the advent of summer and plentiful fodder, they home in any fat source. We're keen to encourage bird life, and a combination of sunflower seeds in one hopper and fat balls in another has proved extremely popular to nesting birds raising their next generation. We have resident robins, various finches,nuthatches, tits and even a splendid spotted wood pecker regularly stops by to snack on the fat balls. The grey squirrel is an adept and skilled gymnast, and has found ways of reaching the fat balls, even though they're suspended in such a way as to discourage visits from squirrels. At around breakfast and lunch times, the squirrel has often been seen hanging from the hopper while helping itself to copious quantities of fat -- or dropping pieces which subsequently can be picked up from the ground at leisure. My first attempt to squirrel proof the hopper involved covering part of the branch from which it is suspended, together with the wire leading to the hopper, with cuttings from a prickly shrub. Ironically, I managed to prick myself when installing this deterrent, which seemed to have virtually no effect on the squirrel who (it has become almost human in his antics), after being initially put off, soon braved the thorns and raided the fat balls. This called for some new thinking. I decided to cut up some large plastic tonic bottles, installing them so as to cover the suspending wire, with the top one having the bottle top end upwards and the bottom one the reverse, thus providing smooth sloping surfaces which would be hard to grasp even by a dexterous squirrel. Initially, this worked, until the squirrel worked out that he could leap from another branch straight on to the fat ball hopper. So, some re-siting of the the hopper was carried out, and the plastic bottle obstacle was lengthened and sprayed with oil. In addition, a length of plastic pipe was added to cover the wire below the bottles. But in the process the hopper was lowered, and earlier today we observed the squirrel leaping successfully from the ground onto the hopper. The solution to this means of access was easy: the hopper was raised to a height beyond jumping distance. And it worked. So we have had the pleasure of watching the squirrel unsuccessfully attempting to jump up to the hopper, which is now out of reach. But, I'm not breaking open the champagne just yet because what this saga has demonstrated is that this squirrel (and no doubt the species as a whole) has some surprisingly successful cognitive strategies at its disposal so that 'squirrelling away' in our household refers not to storage strategies, but to the persistence and skill which the squirrel exhibits in trying successfully to achieve its goal.