Do you think they knew??
No, I don't think dirty kittys should be on the table. Nor, do I think that gray squirrels should be cleaning out my bird feeders. But this year…. I will be feeding them.
It was months ago, that gray squirrels (at least in my area) started jumping in front of cars, in extraordinary numbers. One day I counted six fresh dead squirrels in the 1.5 miles it takes to get to the bottom of the hill. Driving anywhere was a challenge. It almost seemed that they waited until the car was upon them to leap from the roadside and under the wheels. I hated to go anywhere. I'll do almost anything to avoid hitting an animal, or frog, or turtle.. or anything. I swerve, slam on my brakes and drive entirely too slowly when creatures are in the road. This year it was spooky.
The prediction is that we could lose 50% of the squirrel population this year, to starvation. There are NO acorns. Seriously. I usually rake acorns into piles 3 feet high and six feet across. This year, nothing. The turkeys are missing from my yard, too. I know that they've been seen regularly at nearby orchards. But here, where last year, I had 37 of them, everyday, I have none.
I hadn't given any of this much thought until my friend Manise posted a link to an article in the Boston Globe last week titled, Where Did All the Acorns Go? Reading it got me thinking, a proverbial light bulb. This isn't the first time we've had a shortage. When I first moved to this oak woods, we went several years without acorns. I remember asking around to see if these were a species I was unfamiliar with. I didn't know that the oaks had acorn cycles. One year, I blamed it on a gypsy moths infestation. Not this time. Another article I've come across describes a shortage in the mid atlantic states during 2008. That year we had a bumper crop.
The past few years have been mast years for the oaks. Huge, abundant amounts of nuts. It only makes sense then, that the squirrel population would have flourished. I had only to look up to see them, racing throughout the woods, leaping branch to branch and tree to tree, small figures against the sky. I love watching them. Treetops full of motion, and commotion!
So, yes.. I'll be adding extra seed to the feeders. Sammy will be pleased, he'll have a bit more to watch during the winter. Aaahh.. the table, it will need to be cleaned before each meal.
Comments
5 responses to “No acorns..”
Now I shall have to go out and look for acorns. Come to think of it I haven’t been bonked on the head this fall at all! I do feed the squirrels anyway. And the turkeys are out in the cornfields gleaning now.
Just noticed I started and ended that para with “now”.
We don’t have oak trees in my yard but we do have lots of squirrels. Interesting story.
We went for 3 years without any acorns. I also noticed that we had late spring frosts those years, enough to freeze out the primary and secondary buds. There were bad gypsy moth caterpillars too…I was worried.
Finally, this fall, the acorns returned. I cannot say that there were lower numbers of squirrels or turkey in those last 3 years, there has been a lot of clear cutting going on, so ….hard to say exactly what is to blame for lower numbers of certain wildlife.
Interesting article, thanks for posting the link!
Missed your post until today. I found the article interesting too. We lost 40% of the canopy of my huge oak tree to the pre-Halloween Snow Storm, but even before that there were a pitiful number that the squirrels ate before they were truly ripe. My squirrels have been largely gone until I filled up the bird feeder the other day- so far just my favorite black squirrel who is not greedy as the gray ones and a red one- both just eat the left overs on the ground.
The only thing I’m thankful for is that the lawn is not littered with acorns that add way too much acidity to the soil and less snack food for the dogs who invariably puke after.
The thought of suicidal squirrels is awful to contemplate let alone witness.
I didn’t know that acorn production was cyclical. Though I haven’t lived around oak trees since I was a very small child, so I’ve never really been able to observe.