Squirrel Trapping Underway

Our fall trapping season got underway yesterday morning for the T.A. Squirrel Project. This year's trapping has started off a bit slower than last year. In the fall of 2015, we captured 5 squirrels in the first two days. I half expected the same success rate this year and was surprised that only one squirrel was captured all day yesterday. This was a juvenile squirrel and was too small to receive a collar, thus it was measured and released. As of second block today, there were no new captures.

I set a game camera up on one of my forest traps hoping to get video of a squirrel entering the trap. Instead, I was rewarded with some evidence as to why our trapping season may be a little more challenging this year. It is a banner year for acorns from the northern red oak (Quercus rubra) trees in the T.A. forest. Acorns as well as beech and hickory nuts are commonly referred to as "mast" by wildlife scientists. Mast producing trees are important as food sources for squirrels, deer, wild turkey, bear, as well as a host of other Maine creatures.  It seems the squirrels are currently flooded with a bounty of acorns offering a high energy food source that doesn't risk entering a trap. Last year was a much lighter year for our T.A. mast producing trees and it makes sense that the squirrels would have been more eager to enter the trap after our peanut butter in mid October. My gut tells me that as the season rolls on, the acorns will become more scarce and our catch rate will increase.

Watch as this gray squirrel carefully hides an acorn in the leaf litter on the forest floor. 

I close the traps each afternoon and open them the next morning in an effort to avoid catching skunks and other nocturnal critters. When I arrived at this trap this morning, I found it flipped upside down with the leaves disturbed all around it. It seems squirrels are not the only creatures that like peanut butter. Check out the videos below to see some of our night time visitors. 

A dog out for a walk along the Eastern Trail must have followed its nose right to our trap.

This raccoon flipped our trap over and carefully stole all the peanut butter from inside.