Puffed Up With Pride….King of the Tree…Lord of the Flock.
Snacking on the Pink Stuff.
Now on to the furry friends…
Gray squirrel, gray squirrel, swish your bushy tail.
Late for the fun…snow storm slowed me down…just a little.
“Where have you seen a squirrel? Does the squirrel trot along or leap when running on the ground? Does it run straight ahead or stop at intervals for observations? How does it look? How does it act when looking to see of the coast is clear?” Handbook of Nature Study, page 236.
If you have a squirrel to observe, I highly recommend looking at Lesson 57 in the Handbook of Nature Study. There are quite a number of questions to answer and to record in your nature journal. In this section Anna Botsford Comstock also gives the account of “Furry” their pet squirrel in journal style that you might like to read for fun to your children.
Hope you enjoyed taking a look at my friends.
As part of Tweet and See, here is our list of February 2011 birds observed for the month:
Our study of pine cones started way back when I was writing the Autumn Series ebook. We gathered a few pine cones to use in the experiments suggested. We had fun soaking the cones in a bucket of water and then setting them in the sun to observe them as they dried and opened up again. Simple things sometimes make the deepest impressions and honestly, none of us had really put all the pieces together until doing the experiments. I know I took photos but they are lost somewhere on my hard drive. Could that be a sign of taking too many photos? I bet a lot of you can relate to my desire to document as much as I can about our world and that leads to lots of images to save and enjoy.
Our unofficial theme as we worked through this study became something like this:
Pine cones don’t just hold still, they are a living thing created for a specific purpose.
What else pushed this pine cone study up another notch?
We have had sort of an on-going study of the female and male cones of the pines in our area.
We studied pine cones back in February of 2008 as part of the Winter Wednesday studies: Cones and a Woodpecker. We also studied pines as part of the Winter Series back in February 2010. This time though we are really trying to concentrate on the cones.
We extended our study of female and male cones.
Male cones with the pollen.
This is the photo that sort of started it all so long ago. We wondered if these were “baby pine cones”. Well, it turns out they are not and only after completing a study of what gymnosperms are in our biology study did things start to fall into place. There are male and female cones on the tree. Females are usually at the top and males at the bottom. The males have the pollen that is wind driven up to meet up with the female cones. How about a simple video that even I can understand? Here you go!
Next we wondered why the female cones are sticky and then we guessed it had to do something with capturing the pollen…but that is whole other subject.
This guy wanted to be included in our pine cone study this week. He was so very happy that I put out some extra walnuts for him when I was filling the birdfeeders and he climbed up the tree to look in the living room window at us.
“Thanks a lot”, he said as he swished his big fluffy tail and then dropped to the ground and off to eat some more.
There were also some bird friends that made an appearance but I will save those for another post.
There is always something to learn about in our world and these challenges have helped us focus on things that we never dream of making into a complete study all on their own. I love it.
Caught in the act of climbing up to the birdfeeder…this squirrel is a permanent resident in our backyard. He and a friend have totally stripped the walnut tree of any nuts.
Here is what my sidewalk looks like under the walnut tree…nothing but shells and casings. What a mess! This is the second year in a row that the squirrels have eaten all the nuts.
There is finally a little color along our regular walking trail and those are clouds in the sky but there was no rain. My daughter Amanda had to take a trip over the Sierra this week and she said that the trees up on the pass are just starting to turn colors…mostly aspens. We may need to take a drive up their next weekend.
We saw lots of these wild grapes far up over the walking trail. They look so good and we wondered if they would be sweet or tart. There was no way to reach them since they were far up in the trees where they reach the sunlight. So I will be satisfied with recreating this photo in my nature journal this week since I love the colors of the leaves and grapes and the shape of the leaves is awesome.
One last photo that really isn’t a sign of autumn but I thought it was fun to catch this hummingbird stopping by to sip at our feeder. We have had a bunch of hummingbirds this summer and I even hung another feeder because there was always a fight happening at the two we already had.
Yesterday we worked in the garden and completed the initial fall clean up. There is still some life out there and a few tomatoes and peppers to ripen up. I composted a bit in one box and I will be planting some peas, spinach, and lettuce later today and hopefully we will have another crop before the winter weather hits.
I think we will take a trip to the apple orchard this week if all my boys are recovered from their cold/flu from last week. Nothing like the thoughts of a little apple pie to perk up a sick boy! Of course we will be tasting different varieties of apples as part of the apple challenge….research of course. 🙂
Yesterday we were able to take a hike out in the snow at our favorite spot. It felt like spring and the sun warmed my neck in a welcome way. I realized I can smell the forest again. This is the first time I noted that during winter there are far less fragrances in the air. Yesterday we smelled the piney woods fragrance of the evergreens in the warming sun. It smelled delicious.
We tried to focus on finding signs of mammals on our hike as part of the Winter Series Challenge for mammals.
The squirrels have been busy munching on cones.
Isn’t this just the most wonderful cone you have seen in a long time?
The snow is melting a little on this familiar hike. The beaver dam is still visible with all the leaves gone from the trees and bushes.
Here you can see the snow pulling away from the creek water and exposing the grasses underneath. It feels like spring here for the first time.
I am thinking these are dog tracks but perhaps coyote since we have seen them in this area before.
Now these I am pretty sure are rabbit tracks…or perhaps snowshoe hare tracks.
We spotted this trail of tracks to the left of the snowy log and if you look carefully you can see them disappear in the distance. I have no idea who made them but they were fun to see and to talk about.
Here are some more tracks down by an icy spot on the creek.
We came home and decided to look up and learn about a mammal from our field guide. There are quite a few to choose from that live in this particular area, but we chose the Douglas squirrel (or Chickaree). We often hear squirrels in the trees and now we know that in this particular area, the only tree squirrel is the Douglas squirrel. They have a chattering sound that is distinct, making it easier to identify even if we don’t actually see them in the trees. Our mammal field guide says that they are active all year long, but they still store a winter cache of cones. We also learned that the piles of leftovers where a squirrel eats are called middens. There is an actual name for those piles we see under trees!
“Nature has made him master forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws. Probably over fifty percent of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of the Big Trees perhaps ninety percent pass through his hands.”
John Muir on Douglas squirrels, The Mountains of California.
Isn’t that interesting? I love when we take a few minutes to learn a little more about something in our nature study that really is meaningful and will help us understand our local environment better.
This was a great challenge for us this time around.
We have a beautiful walnut tree in our backyard and it has always given us an abundance of nuts each autumn. The photo shown here is from a few years ago and shows part of our walnut harvest. Around this time of year, we are usually gathering oodles of nuts to dry and crack to eat and save for our baking.
Not this year.
Grey squirrels came and ate every last nut in our crop. Climbing into the tree, they would pick the nuts wrapped in their green outer coats, strip the casings off, and then proceed to crack the shells to get to the meat.
Piles and piles of shells and green casings dropped to the ground, littering the sidewalk and garden below. I thought surely they couldn’t eat them all, but they did.
I have mixed feelings about the whole situation. On one hand, I love having the furry little guys in my yard and away from my birdfeeders. On the other hand, I would have liked to have had a few nuts in my pantry for cookies and muffins and salads. This autumn will be known as the year with no nuts.
Our front yard also has a squirrel that visits quite frequently. It is a different variety of squirrel and he is FAST.
(I shared this photo a few weeks ago during our tree study…we think it is a Fox Squirrel.)
He is busy eating the seeds from the tulip tree.
Look at those feet! No wonder they can climb and jump like they do!
He nibbles and then scurries off down the street, as if he has a regular route he takes to dine at various spots in the neighborhood.
He is fun to watch as he bounds down the street and up onto the neighbor’s narrow fence top. My son, who does a lot of his schoolwork in the living room at the table by the window, calls my attention to our resident squirrel all the time. We are getting to know him quite well this year.
The other day as I was driving down a fairly busy street in town, a squirrel decided to run out in front of me. I know from experience that they usually dart out of the way at the last minute and I try not to get too excited. This one seemed to look me in the eye as he sat in my lane of traffic, a crazy game of chicken. Starting to move, he zigged and zagged a little in front of me and stood still again as I got closer. I slowed a bit and started coaching him to “Get out of the way!” At the last possible moment, he ran off to the side of the road and quickly up a tree. Why do they do that?
For the most part, we enjoy our neighborhood squirrels and find a great deal of entertainment value in this rodent. Our favorite squirrel actually walks the telephone line at a busy intersection in town. We see him probably once a week doing his tight-rope act, defying gravity and giving us something to be in awe about with this little one of God’s creation.
Here is our link to our previous squirrel study if you would like to read that one: Squirrel Study
Watch this video to see another common squirrel in our area…the California Ground Squirrel. This video was taken last spring on a hike we took not too far from our home.
It was a hot summer day at our house and we were trying to think of ways to escape the heat. We decided to head up the mountain where it was about twenty degrees cooler and take a bike ride and have a picnic. (Another very crooked horizon in this photo….I had my little camera and the viewing screen is nothing but glare sometimes in the bright sun so I have no idea if what I am shooting is crooked or not.)
The trail was fairly crowded with others that shared our idea to cool off. We pedaled about eight miles round trip but since the temperatures were so much cooler, it was very enjoyable.
We mostly stayed in the forest but at one point we veered over to the lake and sat in the shade and had a drink.
Along the trail there were patches of Indian Paintbrush blooming like orange pokers tucked in and around the green grasses.
This pretty pink flower was blooming as well.
This was the first time I noticed this particular sign on a tree near where we stopped to picnic. I thought the graphic was rather clever.
It just so happened that this guy was trying to find a meal as well. He checked out under our table but then decided to dig little holes to see what he could munch on.
I actually was able to get rather close to take this photo since he was occupied with something tasty. He is a Golden-mantled ground squirrel….which looks like a chipmunk but with no stripes on his head.
We had a very refreshing day on the bike trail and there were plenty of interesting things to keep us entertained.
We had a unique experience the other day out on a walk in an area where at this time of year there are very few other people. It was a quiet, bird watching sort of day as we hiked along until one section of the trail where I swore I heard music. We all stopped and listened and sure enough, far in the distance we could hear music playing….I thought banjo music. We had no idea where the music was coming from. We were pretty far from the parking area, we had only seen one other person the whole afternoon, and I was fairly sure it was someone actually playing the music since it sort of started and stopped and wasn’t like it was a CD or something like that.
We rounded one bend in the trail and we had our answer. You can listen for yourself here in this very short video. (I felt really weird taking a video but I was sure we would want to remind ourselves of this in the future…it made us smile.)
We did eventually catch up to these two walking along and they were just out enjoying the spring weather, making some music. I have no idea what kind of instrument he was playing. It looked to be homemade. It sort of looked like a guitar/banjo/cigar box stringed instrument.
Sometimes I feel like playing music when I am out on a hike too. No, I won’t be doing it anytime soon.
Here is a little friend that entertained us on this afternoon as well. California ground squirrel….he was posing for us for a very long time.
We also had a chance to observe up close the catkins of the Quaking aspens. This is something new and interesting that I want to do some more research about…..the boys were not impressed with this subject but I will do research on my own. 🙂
The photo at the top of the page is a bunch of catkins hanging on the tree. Aren’t they pretty?
Something I learned about the Quaking aspen is that is the preferred food of the beaver. It makes total sense to me since this is where we saw the beaver’s dam and there is an abundance of aspens. I love making connections.
Today ended up with a nature study of squirrels at my dad’s house. We had gone over to visit him this afternoon and somehow it was mentioned that we were studying squirrels this week. His eyes lit up and he took us out for a little walk on the backside of his property. He has been up there cutting wood and he had something to share with us.
This is what he wanted us to see up on the hill next to his woodpile. There was a whole area that was piled high with shredded pinecones. All of the reddish material that you see in this photo is the remnants of a squirrel feast. The squirrels have been very busy eating up in the trees and letting the litter fall to the ground in great heaps.
Here in the center, probably easier to see if you click the photo, are some of the many, many pinecones stripped of their tasty seeds.
Here is a closer shot of another cone.
Can you believe how big this pile is? They are busy squirrels.
Here one of the seeds from the cone after the squirrel has finished with it.
Now for a few more mammal signs from our walk.
We also saw these “signs” from some mule deer that live in this area. Just last week we saw seven deer walking down to my dad’s pond late in the afternoon. They seemed not to care that we were watching in awe of their beauty.
Then right down the hill from where we were, we saw these tell-tale signs of a busy gopher. You could not walk easily on this slope because the ground was just full of holes and tunnels.
Here is another view of one of the holes. My dad was thinking about making a new garden in this area but I told him he better think twice….deer and gophers don’t mix very well with a vegetable garden. Even though it is a perfect spot for growing with lots of sunlight, he would need to fence it like his other garden area….a very tall fence.
What a great way to study squirrels. My dad thinks of his property as a sort of nature study laboratory for our family. He will call us over if he sees something interesting and I love that about him. My dad and I did not spend much time together when I was a child because he was always working but now that he is retired, he and I share our love of all things that have to do with the great outdoors. He has not always been a fan of homeschooling but I think he now has changed his mind and is eager to help us out with our nature study.
Here comes this week’s challenge. I happen to have a squirrel that visits my backyard and from time to time he gives us a little show. You can be sure we will be doing some direct observation this week. We also noticed some signs of squirrels on our last Winter Wednesday walk so we will be looking up some information about that too. Outdoor Hour Challenge
#45 Squirrels (You may also like to use the Autumn Series Challenge for Squirrels for additional information.)
1. Read pages 233-237 in the Handbook of Nature Study. Use your highlighter to mark the sections with facts you can share with your children. There are plenty of observation suggestions in Lesson 57 on pages 236 and 237. Keep these ideas in mind as you take your nature walk this week.
“The squirrel’s legs are short because he is essentially a climber rather than a runner; the hips are very strong, which insures his power as a jumper, and his leaps are truly remarkable.”
“The squirrel has two pairs of gnawing teeth which are very long and strong, as in all rodents, and he needs to keep busy gnawing hard things with them, or they will grow so long that he cannot use them at all and will starve to death.”
“During the winter, the red squirrel does not remain at home except in the coldest weather, when he lies cozily with his tail wrapped around him like a fur neck-piece to keep him warm.”
Handbook of Nature Study, pages 234 and 235
2. Supplemental reading in The Burgess Animal Book for Children: Read Stories 4-6. Take a few minutes after reading each story to have your child narrate to you some interesting points from the story. Use the illustrations on pages 30, 36, and 41 of the book to get the narration going if they are having trouble getting started.
3. Spend 10-15 minutes outdoors on a nature walk. As you walk, discuss where you might find a squirrel in your neighborhood. Remind your child where a squirrel lives and what it eats. If you know you have a squirrel in your yard or at your local park, take along some nuts or seeds to put out and observe the squirrel eating. Never feed a squirrel by hand. Don’t worry if you cannot observe a squirrel this week. Enjoy your outdoor time and observe any mammals that you come into contact with during your walk.
4. For your nature journal you can write out your observations from your squirrel watching. Use the observation suggestions for ideas to include in your entry: describe the color of the fur, how the eyes are placed, what do the paws look like, how does the squirrel climb up and down a tree, the sound the squirrel makes as he expresses himself, show the tracks that the squirrel makes in the snow. If you did not observe a squirrel, you can use any of the additional resources to include in your nature journal this week.
Would you like a printable notebook page to use along with your squirrel nature study?
