Nibblers

Leslie Ditmars recently saw unusual animal activity in Sharon.

“I have been witnessing the oddest behavior from a squirrel in the last two weeks,” she said. “I was curious as to why there was an abundance of leaf clusters underneath an old maple tree.”

Looking into the canopy of the 250-plus-year-old maple, she spotted a gray squirrel “methodically chewing off twigs with a bunch of four to five leaves and attached seed pods, aka helicopters. 

“I watched him for some time repeat this gnawing behavior as clusters floated to the ground,” my correspondent said. “The area under just this one tree was littered with these clusters. What do you suppose it is going to do with all this tree debris? Is it after the seeds, and finds that eating them on the ground is easier than from some 25 feet up in the tree, or is it brushing its teeth?”

Good dental hygiene is probably a byproduct. It likely had something else in mind.

My wife, Donna, noticed something similar — the results, not the perpetrator. The ground was strewn with oak clusters and branch ends with leaves.

Since there had been no heavy wind, she wondered if squirrels were responsible. Then just recently we were walking and saw a pair of young squirrels wrestling a good-sized green butternut. They lost control and it rolled into the street. That, I suppose was an accident, though maybe they were clever enough to wait for a car tire to squash it and reveal the seed inside. 

No doubt these other squirrels were hurrying nature along, nibbling off branch ends, then later gathering the seeds/nuts to squirrel away somewhere.

Donna and I, in fact, on Saturday witnessed a squadron of squirrels, some young, some old, collecting maple seeds and a few horse chestnuts at the end of our street.

They might be seen as very clever, these squirrels — but why is it they never seem to be able to find where they buried those nuts and seeds, and dig everywhere in the spring?

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As an aside, Ditmars said she also enjoyed “a pair of Rufous-sided towhees nesting in a yew shrub. Gorgeous birds. I had to look them up as I had never seen them before. Such a treat to see them up close as they tended their nest.”

The closest I can come to that experience is, Donna and I, out for a walk, watched from a bridge as a great blue heron stood stock still on a boulder in the middle of a very low Housatonic River. It was fishing. It eyed the water, then lurched. If it caught something, it gulped it quickly.

Then it took off in its most awkwardly graceful flight down river.

Bernard A. Drew is senior associate editor of this newspaper.