Two things you probably didn't know about gray squirrels

By Wildlife Biologist Joe Wiley You can learn a lot about wildlife by just being still and observant. While sitting on my front porch on a warm day in late March, I noticed four gray squirrels in the ancient sugar maple tree in the yard. The squirrels were doing usual springtime squirrel stuff, mostly courtship chasing. Then, I noticed one of the squirrels was very interested in the swollen base of branch stubs on the main trunk of the maple. Using my binoculars, I could see the squirrel licking a light colored spot on the branch stub. It was licking maple sap from a small wound that it had chewed on the stub. As I scanned the rest of the tree I saw about 8 more small wounds like the one in the picture below. Apparently squirrels like maple sap as much as we humans do and can tap trees in their own way. Several weeks later, I was raking the lawn and noticed hundreds of reddish maple twigs that were 5 to 6 inches long under the silver maple next to the sugar maple. I picked several of these up and noticed that they were all neatly clipped at a 45 degree angle by the squirrels. Apparently, the squirrels clipped the branches then ate the buds off the twigs on the ground. I never observed them doing this, but did see one in the tree eating buds at the end of a slender branch with some difficulty. Apparently, they found clipping them off and then eating the swollen buds on the ground easier than getting them on the tree. Who knew?