When it comes to the ground to feed or store food in hiding places to eat later, it also has great mobility and can reach speeds of up to 25 km per hour. The eastern grey squirrel spends most of its life in trees, where it moves about with great agility. Because the western grey squirrel Sciurus griseus does not occur in Canada, the eastern grey squirrel is referred to by most Canadians simply as the grey squirrel. There is a thriving population in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, introduced in 1914, and more recently animals have been released into parks in Victoria and Calgary.Įastern grey squirrels have also been introduced into Great Britain and South Africa. The squirrels have been introduced into city parks in western Canada. It is predominantly a nut-eating species and its historic range coincided with the vast tracts of hardwood forests in eastern North America, in particular with oak and hickory trees. The eastern grey squirrel is the largest tree squirrel found in eastern Canada. A more commonly heard vocalization is a rasping whisk accentuated by a flick of the tail.Ī noticeable sign of the presence of the grey squirrel is the large leaf nest, or drey. In an aggressive encounter between two squirrels, tooth chattering is often heard. Sometimes several squirrels join together to taunt a predator with a chorus of scolding accompanied by agitated twitches of the tail.
#NATURAL PREDATOR FOR SQUIRRELS SERIES#
The eastern grey squirrel’s alarm call is a series of rapid clicking sounds- kuk, kuk, kuk-which warns all other nearby squirrels of danger. This bounding stride may be as much as 1 m if the animal is in a hurry. In the snow these tracks often look like two exclamation marks (!!). When the squirrel bounds across the ground the tracks are paired, hindprints slightly ahead of the foreprints. The tracks of eastern grey squirrels are distinctive: forefeet leave a round print about 2.5 cm long the hindprints are more triangular, approximately 6 cm long. In winter small holes in the snow or ground indicate where squirrels have been digging to find hidden stores of nuts buried earlier in the year. The gnawed husks and shells of nuts, especially acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts, beechnuts, and pecans, can be found littering the ground around the base of a tree where the squirrels have been feeding. There are typical signs that eastern grey squirrels inhabit an area. Finally, the tail can be used to distract a pursuing predator. It acts as a rudder when the animal jumps from high places, as a warm covering during the winter, as a signal to other eastern grey squirrels indicating an individual’s mood, and perhaps as a sunshade. Many of the common names given to the eastern grey squirrel, such as Bannertail and Silvertail, call attention to this prominent feature. Combining the two means loosely that the squirrel is one that sits in the shadow of its own tail. Indeed, the Latin word for squirrel, sciurus, is derived from two Greek words, skia, meaning shadow, and oura, meaning tail. The most notable physical feature of the eastern grey squirrel is its large bushy tail. A litter may contain both black and grey individuals. Black individuals are generally a glossy uniform black all over, but the species may show all shades of gradation between black and grey. The grey fur is a grizzled salt-and-pepper combination produced by lead-grey underfur, overlain by banded grey and black guard hairs tipped with white. The fur colour is grey or black and may change with the seasons. The squirrel’s fur is thicker and longer in winter. Both of these are smaller animals with a rusty red colour on the body, head, and tail. These individuals should not be confused with the American red squirrel Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, which is common to Canada’s northern forests, nor with Douglas’s squirrel T. douglasii, found in British Columbia. There are rare instances of a reddish colour phase and some animals may also have a combination of colours, for example a black body with a red tail. Albino eastern grey squirrels also occur and in the United States a few small, completely white populations are found. This may indicate that the gene responsible for black coloration has some cold-weather adaptation associated with it. Farther south the black phase is less common and is not found at all in the southern United States. Black is often the dominant colour in Ontario and Quebec, toward the northern limits of the species’ range.
Eastern grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis commonly occur in two colour phases, grey and black, which leads people to think-mistakenly-that there are two different species.
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