SOMETHING SQUIRRELY

Squirrel at bird feeder

Author Beatrix Potter may have been enchanted with squirrels when she wrote The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, but she did portray Squirrel Nutkin as saucy and badly-behaved and almost had an owl eat him for his misbehavior. I readily agree with Potter’s portrayal of Squirrel Nutkin since an army of such ill-behaved tail swishers have invaded my backyard and sit underneath our new bird feeder waiting for sunflower seeds to fall from heaven when it’s filled daily. The feeder has a black baffle to keep them from climbing the pole, but I’ve heard they can chew through metal.

These bushy-tailed rodents are a nuisance, and I’m thinking of finding a Mr. Brown, the owl, to eat a few of them, or at least for the owl to use its talons to pull the squirrels’ tails in two when they try to scamper away (as reported in The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin). I know that I’m at risk of being called an animal hater, but we’ve worked hard at ordering a bird feeder, putting it together, and furnishing it with the right kind of seed to attract the birds we thought a Merlin hawk had done away with several weeks ago. However, the squirrels love to make the nuthatches and titmice scatter when they come to feed, and I’m not sure they don’t sometimes catch and consume the tiny birds.

After all, these critters are just rodents, and I don’t like the sight of them sitting under the bird feeder, frightening my feathered friends away. Thank goodness we don’t have any flying ones in the backyard… just big-eyed critters that come down our oaks head first, ready to pounce on our birds, long incisors bared.

I’ve never hankered after squirrel stew, but I know that James Beard has a recipe, and in south Louisiana, it’s been a favored dish (Cajuns, they say, will eat anything. Consider the mudbug!). My mother was known for stirring up a squirrel stew in a black iron pot she placed over a wood fire in the living room fireplace, thinking this arrangement made the dish more authentic and tasty. I never dared to taste it and am glad I didn’t. Nowadays, those stews are banned because squirrels are often exposed to toxic waste and in some locales have been known to cause certain types of dementia.

Thank goodness, we don’t have a colony of white squirrels in the backyard. These unusual critters often frequent university campuses because students bring them in, touting that the albino squirrel brings good luck — campuses in Texas, Kentucky, and Ohio, to name a few. So far, only gray squirrels seem to have taken up residence on the Sewanee campus,

Although squirrels symbolize energy and socialization, and orphaned ones who’ve been raised by foster human parents will return to their parents. I can’t imagine taking one in to raise. I do know my backyard squirrels aren’t Cajun immigrants because they don’t like cayenne pepper, garlic, and black pepper — perhaps because they sense that those seasonings are always used in a tasty stew or gumbo of which they may become the chief ingredient.

Photography by Victoria I. Sullivan

MYSTERY OF THE DISAPPEARING BIRDS

Bird feeder at Fairbanks home

In my last blog, I wrote about birds disappearing from our yard and surrounding woods and wondered if their food had been poisoned by pesticides or herbicides, or if they had migrated early, or did they just not like the birdbath we'd filled with reverse osmosis water. They may not have liked the appearance of our new bird feeder, which resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Yesterday afternoon we looked out the living room window at the bird feeder and, voila, we discovered an ominous reason for the sudden absence of birdlife (except for a few marauding crows). Atop the new bird feeder, wings folded neatly and looking like a polite statue of itself, was a Merlin falcon whose chief diet consists of small birds — sparrows, wrens, nuthatches, and titmice that once flocked to our yard, but which must have become prey for this large bird.

I’ve read that Merlins watch for prey from a perch, and what better perch than our tall bird feeder? However, he catches this prey in mid-air, flying at race track speed, and the poor smaller bird dies from sudden attack. What do raptors do with feathers and bill?

We watched him for a half hour or so until he flew into the woods where he’d probably found an abandoned crow’s nest, 10 - 50 feet above the ground. I was afraid to track him, having heard the story about a hawk attacking a friend when she walked down to her mailbox to get a better view of the bird.

We heard no bird calls as we watched, but later I thought I heard a loud cackle that this raptor often makes. The Merlin could probably team up with crows to make a raucous sonata, but crows regard themselves as creatures superior to most birds and mostly frequent the front yard where they chase squirrels into the tall hemlock. They seem to prefer food in freshly mown grass, rather than smaller birds.

In my readings, I discovered that Merlins also enjoy a good meal of snakes, rats, and bats so they couldn’t be all bad. However, I confess that I prefer the small bird population we'd enjoyed watching splash in the birdbath, and I’m considering dismantling the Merlin’s perch, the leaning bird feeder. Anyway, due to heavy rains, the birdseed has sprouted!

A further negative report about the Merlin: He’s become a threat to an endangered species of Plovers nesting around the Great Lakes. Also, he feeds upon my favorite insects, dragonflies. A statue of this favored insect was given to me by a deceased, cherished friend and sits on a table overlooking the backyard. I’m thinking of moving it away from the window in case Merlin decides to make a crash landing against the sometimes-cloudy panes while we’re away this winter.

Photography by Victoria I. Sullivan