For the first time I perceive this spring that
the year is a circle.
I would make a chart of our life,
just why this circle of creatures completes the world.
Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852
A
red squirrel chiding you
from
his concealment
in
some pine-top
is
the sound most native
to
the locality.
September
24, 1857
No fruit grows in vain.
The red squirrel harvests the
fruit of the pitch pine.
March 12. Observed
the track of a squirrel in the snow under one of the apple trees on the
southeast side of the Hill, and, looking up, saw a red squirrel with a nut or
piece of frozen apple in his mouth, within six feet, sitting in a constrained
position partly crosswise on a limb over my head, perfectly still, and looking
not at me, but off into the air, evidently expecting to escape my attention by
this trick. I stood and watched and chirruped to him about five minutes so
near, and yet he did not at once turn his head to look at me or move a foot or
wink. The only motion was that of his tail curled over his back in the wind. At
length he did change his attitude a little and look at me a moment. Evidently
this is a trick they often practice. If I had been farther off he might
have scolded at me. March 12, 1857
March 18. A
red squirrel runs nimbly before me along the wall, his tail in the air at a
right angle with his body; leaps into a walnut and winds up his clock. March
18, 1857
March 24. I saw two red squirrels in an apple tree, which were rather small, had simply the tops of their backs red and the sides and beneath gray! March 24, 1860
March 24. I saw two red squirrels in an apple tree, which were rather small, had simply the tops of their backs red and the sides and beneath gray! March 24, 1860
March 30. 6
a.m. — To Hill (across water). Hear a red squirrel chirrup at me by the
hemlocks (running up a hemlock), all for my benefit; not that he is
excited by fear, I think, but so full is he of animal spirits that he makes a
great ado about the least event. At first he scratches on the bark very
rapidly with his hind feet without moving the fore feet. He makes so many queer
sounds, and so different from one another, that you would think they came from
half a dozen creatures. I hear now two sounds from him of a very distinct
character, — a low or base inward, worming, screwing, or brewing, kind of sound
(very like that, by the way, which an anxious partridge mother makes) and at
the same time a very sharp and shrill bark, and clear, on a very high key,
totally distinct from the last, — while his tail is flashing incessantly. You
might say that he successfully accomplished the difficult feat of singing and
whistling at the same time. March 30, 1859
April 1. Walking
through the maple there, I see a squirrel's nest twenty-three or twenty-four
feet high in a large maple, and, climbing to it, —for it was so peculiar,
having a basketwork of twigs about it, that I did not know but it was a hawk's
nest, — I found that it was a very perfect (probably) red squirrel's nest, made
entirely of the now very dark or blackish green moss such as grows on the
button-bush and on the swampy ground, – a dense mass of it about one foot
through, matted together, — with an inobvious hole on the east side and a tuft
of loose moss blowing up above it, which seemed to answer for a door or porch
covering. The cavity within was quite small, but very snug and warm, where one
or two squirrels might lie warmly in the severest storm, the dense moss walls
being about three inches thick or more. But what was most peculiar was that
this nest, though placed over the centre of the tree, where it divided into
four or five branches, was regularly and elaborately hedged about and supported
by a basketwork of strong twigs stretched across from bough to bough, which
twigs I perceived had been gnawed green from the maple itself, the stub ends
remaining visible all around. Near by I saw another much smaller and less
perfect nest of the same kind, which had fallen to the ground. This had been made
in a birch, and the birch twigs had been gnawed off, but in this case I noticed
a little fine broken grass within it, mixed with the moss. April 1, 1858
April 2.
In the wood on top of Lee's Cliff, where the other day I noticed that the
chimaphila leaves had been extensively eaten and nibbled off and left on the
ground, I find under one small pitch pine tree a heap of the cones which have
been stripped of their scales, evidently by the red squirrels, the last winter
and fall, they having sat upon some dead limbs above. They were all stripped
regularly from the base upward, excepting the five to seven uppermost and
barren scales, making a pretty figure. I counted two hundred and thirty-nine
cones under this tree alone, and most of them lay within two feet square upon a
mass of the scales one to two inches deep and three or four feet in diameter.
There were also many cones under the surrounding pines. Those I
counted would have made some three quarts or more. These had all been cut
off by the squirrels and conveyed to this tree and there stripped and eaten.
They appeared to have devoured all the fruit of that pitch pine grove, and
probably it was they that nibbled the wintergreen. No fruit grows in
vain. The red squirrel harvests the fruit of the pitch pine. His body is
about the color of the cone. I should like to get his recipe for taking out
pitch, for he must often get his chaps defiled, methinks. These were all fresh
cones, the fruit of last year, perhaps. There was a hole in the ground where
they lodged by that tree. April 2, 1859
April 23. A
large hickory by the wall on the north side (or northeast side) of the hill
apparently just blown down, the one I saw the screech owl go into two or three
years ago. I think it may have fallen in this very high wind which arose within
an hour; at any rate it has fallen since the grass began to spring, for the
owl-hole contains a squirrel's nest made of half-green grass some what
withered, which could only have been found quite recently, and also the limbs
have been driven so deep into the ground that I cannot pull them out, which
shows that the ground was thawed when it fell; also the squirrel's nest, which
is perfectly sheltered, now the tree is fallen, was quite wet through with
rain, that of the morning, as I think. This nest, which I suppose was that
of a red squirrel, was at the bottom of a large hole some eighteen inches deep
and twenty-five feet from the ground, where a large limb had been broken off
formerly. An opening on the side had been stopped with twigs as big as a
pipe-stem and larger, some of them the hickory twigs quite green and freshly
gnawed off with their buds, forming a rude basketwork which kept up and in the
grass and rotten wood, four or five handfuls of which, mixed with the rotten
wood of the inside, composed the nest. This was the half old and withered and
half green grass gathered a few days since about the base of the
tree. April 23, 1859
May 13 .As
I sat in my boat near the Bath Rock at Island, I saw a red squirrel steal slyly
up a red maple, as if he were in search of a bird’s nest (though it is early
for most), and I thought I would see what he was at. He crept far out on the
slender branches and, reaching out his neck, nibbled off the fruit-stems,
sometimes bending them within reach with his paw; and then, squatting on the
twig, he voraciously devoured the half-grown keys, using his paws to direct
them to his mouth, as a nut. Bunch after bunch he plucked and ate, letting many
fall, and he made an abundant if not sumptuous feast, the whole tree hanging
red with fruit around him. It seemed like a fairy fruit as I sat looking toward
the sun and saw the red keys made all glowing and transparent by the sun
between me and the body of the squirrel. It was certainly a cheering
sight, a cunning red squirrel perched on a slender twig between you and the
sun, feasting on the hand some red maple keys. He nibbled voraciously, as if
they were a sweet and luscious fruit to him. What an abundance and variety of
food is now ready for him! At length, when the wind suddenly began to blow hard
and shake the twig on which he sat, he quickly ran down a dozen feet. May
13, 1858
August 15. I hear a red squirrel's reproof, too, as in spring, from the hickories. August 15, 1854
September 1. Saw a red squirrel cutting off white pine cones. He had strewn the ground with them, as yet untouched, under the tree. September 1, 1853
September
24. I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under
the hemlocks with a nut in its mouth. He stopped near the foot of a hemlock,
and, hastily pawing a hole with his fore feet, dropped the nut, covered it up,
and retreated part way up the trunk of the tree, all in a few moments. I
approached the shore to examine the deposit, and he, descending betrayed
no little anxiety for his treasure and made two or three motions to recover the
nut before he retreated. Digging there, I found two pignuts joined together,
with their green shells on, buried about an inch and a half in the soil, under
the red hemlock leaves. This, then, is the way forests are planted. This
nut must have been brought twenty rods at least and was buried at just the
right depth. If the squirrel is killed, or neglects its deposit, a hickory
springs up. P. M. — I walk to that very dense and handsome white
pine grove east of Beck Stow’s Swamp . . . The ground was completely strewn
with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally
green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every
pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them.
You can hardly enter such a wood but you will hear a red squirrel chiding you
from his concealment in some pine-top. It is the sound most native to the
locality. September 24, 1857
September 25. Stopping
in my boat under the Hemlocks, I hear singular bird-like chirruping from two
red squirrels. One sits high on a hemlock bough with a nut in its paws. A
squirrel seems always to have a nut at hand ready to twirl in its paws.
Suddenly he dodges behind the trunk of the tree, and I hear some birds in the
maples across the river utter a peculiar note of alarm of the same character
with the hen’s (I think they were robins), and see them seeking a covert.
Looking round, I see a marsh hawk beating the bushes on that side.
September 25, 1857
October 5 . I
hear the alarum of a small red squirrel. I see him running by fits and starts
along a chestnut bough toward me. His head looks disproportionately large for
his body, like a bulldog's, perhaps because he has his chaps full of nuts. He
chirrups and vibrates his tail, holds himself in, and scratches along a foot as
if it were a mile. He finds noise and activity for both of us. It is evident
that all this ado does not proceed from fear. There is at the bottom, no doubt,
an excess of inquisitiveness and caution, but the greater part is make-believe
and a love of the marvellous. He can hardly keep it up till I am gone, however,
but takes out his nut and tastes it in the midst of his agitation. “See there,
see there,” says he, “who's that? O dear, what shall I do?” and makes believe
run off, but doesn’t get along an inch, – lets it all pass off by flashes
through his tail, while he clings to the bark as if he were holding in a
race-horse. He gets down the trunk at last on to a projecting knot, head
downward, within a rod of you, and chirrups and chatters louder than ever.
Tries to work himself into a fright. The hind part of his body is urging the
forward part along, snapping the tail over it like a whip-lash, but the fore
part, for the most part, clings fast to the bark with desperate energy. Squirr,
“to throw with a jerk,” seems to have quite as much to do with the name as the
Greek skia oura, shadow and tail. October 5, 1857
December 1. P.
M. —Walking in Ebby Hubbard's woods, I hear a red squirrel barking at me amid
the pine and oak tops, and now I see him coursing from tree to tree. How
securely he travels there, fifty feet from the ground, leaping from the
slender, bending twig of one tree across an interval of three or four feet and
catching at the nearest twig of the next, which so bends under him that it is
at first hard to get up it. His travelling a succession of leaps in the air at
that height without wings! And yet he gets along about as rapidly as on the
ground. December 1, 1857
December 14. By the snow I was made aware in this short walk of the recent presence there of squirrels, a fox, and countless mice, whose trail I had crossed, but none of which I saw, or probably should have seen before the snow fell. December 14, 1855
December 16. Steady,
gentle, warm rain all the forenoon, and mist and mizzling in the
afternoon . . . See two red squirrels on the fence, one on each side
of his house, particularly red along their backs and top of head and tail. They
are remarkably tame. One sits twirling apparently a dried apple in his paws,
with his tail curled close over his back as if to keep it warm, fitting its
curve. How much smothered sunlight in their wholesome brown red this misty
day! It is clear New England, Nov-anglia, like the red subsoil. December 16, 1855
December 18. I see a few squirrels’ tracks in the woods and, here and there in one or two places, where a mouse’s gallery approached the surface. December 18, 1854
December 20. Here are some crows already seeking their breakfast in the orchard, and I hear a red squirrel’s reproof. December 20, 1854
December 21. See a red squirrel out in two places. Do they not come out chiefly in the forenoon? December 21, 1859
December 22. Here is a stump on which a squirrel has sat and stripped the pine cones of a neighboring tree. Their cores and scales lie all around. He knew that they contained an almond before the naturalist did. He has long been a close observer of Nature; opens her caskets. December 22, 1850
January
5. To Kibbe Place Swamp. I see where probably a red
squirrel had scratched along over the snow, and in one place a very perfect and
delicate print of his feet. His five toes in separate sharp triangles
distinctly raying off, or often only four visible. In one place I find a
beaten track from a hole in the ground to a walnut a rod distant up which they
have gone for nuts, which still hang on it. The whole print of the foot,
etc., is about an inch and three quarters long, a part of the leg being
impressed. Two of the tracks, when they are running, apparently, the two
foremost, are wider apart; and perhaps with one pair they often make five
marks, with the other four. Where there is a deep furrow in a chestnut
tree between two swelling muscles, in two instances the squirrels, knowing it
to be hollow, have gnawed a hole, enlarging the crack between two cheeks,
and so made themselves a retreat. In one instance they have commenced to gnaw
between the cheeks, though no cavity appears, but I have no doubt the tree is
hollow. January 5, 1853
January 13. I
see under some sizable white pines in E. Hubbard's wood, where red squirrels
have run about much since this snow. They have run chiefly, perhaps, under the
surface of the snow, so that it is very much under mined by their paths under
these trees, and every now and then they have come to the surface, or the
surface has fallen into their gallery. They seem to burrow under the snow about
as readily as a meadow mouse. There are also paths raying out on every side
from the base of the trees. And you see many holes through the snow into the
ground where they now are, and other holes where they have probed for cones and
nuts. The scales of the white pine cones are scattered about here and there.
They seek a dry place to open them, — a fallen limb that rises above the snow,
or often a lower dead stub projecting from the trunk of the tree. January
13, 1860
January 17.
Surveying for William O. Benjamin in east part of Lincoln. Saw a red squirrel
on the wall, it being thawing weather. January 17, 1854
January 17. I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels gliding off silently along the branches of the pines, etc. They are gone so quickly and noiselessly, perhaps keeping the trunk of the tree between you and them, that [you] would not commonly suspect their presence if you were not looking for them. But one that was on the snow ascended a pine and sat on a bough with its back to the trunk as if there was nothing to pay. Yet when I moved again he scud up the tree, and glided across on some very slender twigs into a neigh boring tree, and so I lost him. Here is, apparently, a settlement of these red squirrels. There are many holes through the snow into the ground, and many more where they have probed and dug up a white pine cone, now pretty black and, for aught I can see, with abortive or empty seeds; yet they patiently strip them on the spot, or at the base of the trees, or at the entrance of their holes, and evidently find some good seed. The snow, however, is strewn with the empty and rejected seeds. They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened. In the fall they construct a nest of grass and bark-fibres, moss, etc., in one of the trees for winter use, and so apparently have two resources. January 17, 1860
January 17. I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels gliding off silently along the branches of the pines, etc. They are gone so quickly and noiselessly, perhaps keeping the trunk of the tree between you and them, that [you] would not commonly suspect their presence if you were not looking for them. But one that was on the snow ascended a pine and sat on a bough with its back to the trunk as if there was nothing to pay. Yet when I moved again he scud up the tree, and glided across on some very slender twigs into a neigh boring tree, and so I lost him. Here is, apparently, a settlement of these red squirrels. There are many holes through the snow into the ground, and many more where they have probed and dug up a white pine cone, now pretty black and, for aught I can see, with abortive or empty seeds; yet they patiently strip them on the spot, or at the base of the trees, or at the entrance of their holes, and evidently find some good seed. The snow, however, is strewn with the empty and rejected seeds. They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened. In the fall they construct a nest of grass and bark-fibres, moss, etc., in one of the trees for winter use, and so apparently have two resources. January 17, 1860
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel
A Book of the Seasons, , by Henry Thoreau
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality.”
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
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