Red squirrel hoarding for winter

This is the time of year when the forest starts to get quiet during the heat of daylight hours. Most of the birds have finished nesting and are now busy raising their young, so they’re keeping a lower profile with a lot less singing. You will still hear the loud, endless song of a red-eyed vireo, or the flute-like call of a hermit thrush in the heat of the day, but most of the warblers are much less vocal than they were back in May and June.

The heat of July also drives many mammals such as deer and bear deeper into the forest where it’s cooler, and even there they don’t move around much during the day. You’re most likely to find animals such as deer, moose and raccoons on the move early in the morning, but with sunrise at 5:15 a.m. in mid-July, that’s tough ask. But if you do make the commitment to get up early, you are sure to be rewarded with peaceful moments, quite walks, and serene, misty sunrises even if you don’t see a bear.

When you’re out on your walks in the forest this time of year, you can still be certain wildlife is around you by keeping an eye for the signs they leave in the forest. You may notice scat on the trails – many animals such as fox leave their scat right in the middle of a trail as a territory marker. You might see scrapes on trees where deer rubbed their antlers, or perhaps where a moose ripped the bark off a tree to eat last winter when food was scarce. A more common sign, one you’re likely to see on any walk in the woods in the Lakes Region is a pile of pine cone scales left by a red squirrel.

Red squirrels are active all year, collecting food in the summer and stashing it away for their winter stores. You may even find a large pile of unconsumed pine cones hoarded under a fallen tree — that’s a sure sign of a squirrel food store. During the winter and even into summer, red squirrels will take a pine cone and sit at a spot with a good view of their surroundings — to watch for predators on the approach — and tear a cone apart, one scale at a time, to get the small seed hidden underneath each scale. Under these feeding locations you’ll find a pile of husked pine cones as well as the spine of the cone itself. These piles of detritus are called midden piles. (According to the New World Dictionary the term midden is an archeological term for a trash pile. Its root comes from a Scandinavian word meaning manure pile.)

Small midden piles might be found on or beside an exposed boulder, whereas at the base of a tree a pile may be quite large. Look for midden piles especially at the base of white pines. Once a squirrel finds a spot they like they will sit on the same branch year after year, shredding cones and letting the scales drop down onto the pile.

Even during a hot day a red squirrel might be easily found as they can be rather noisy. If you enter their territory, especially in the morning, you are likely to get a loud, chattering scolding as it expresses its dissatisfaction with your presence in its domain. This alert is so reliable that other forest creatures use the squirrel’s alarm to warn them to approaching dangers — a red squirrel alert has spoiled many a day for a deer hunter on a hot trail. The red squirrel is the early warning radar of the forest!

Squirrels are important elements of the local food chain. They consume vast numbers of seeds and nuts, but their memory is less than perfect, so many of the seeds they stash away will go un-eaten, providing a mechanism for trees to spread their seeds farther from their location than relying on wind to disperse them. Squirrels also support many animals farther up the food chain, being desirable prey for predators such as fox, fishers, hawks, and owls. Since red squirrels are active all year, they are an especially valuable source of winter protein for these predators. Having so many predators, it’s good thing they can have two litters each year, each averaging five to seven offspring, which are called kits.

Another sign you might find in mid and late summer is a partially-eaten mushroom that a squirrel, or perhaps a chipmunk, has been chewing on. This is quite common once fungus season arrives so you are likely to see chewed up mushrooms in late July and August. It makes me wonder if they ever get sick from eating a poison mushroom. Perhaps they have learned which ones to avoid, or perhaps they are immune to their toxins. Either way, evolution has served them well.

There are many other signs of animals in the forest — when you are out enjoying these hot summer days, keep your eye open and see what evidence you will come across. The animals may not be very active during the day right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find proof that they’re out there.

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Scott Powell lives in Meredith, visiting the forest and waters in the Lakes Region and the White Mountains. He is a Conservation Commissioner for the town of Meredith, on the board of directors of the Lake Wicwas Association, and a member of the Land Stewardship Committee at the Lakes Region Conservation Trust. He writes a weekly journal about nature in the Lakes Region at https://wicwaslake.blogspot.com/ You can contact him at scottpowellnh1@gmail.com.