SQUIRREL HARRIERS
I read not long ago of a squirrel being chased along the ground and up a tree by a stoat. The squirrel proved too good for the stoat in the tree but it was, of course, rather slow on the ground. Shortly after reading about this I watched a red squirrel, a very sooty specimen, being bullied by a pair of crows. It began when the squirrel ran down the trunk of a tree and crossed the ground to another. A blackbird began to scold and flew at the squirrel, chasing it back into the tree so that the crows became aware of its presence. The blackbird gave up when the crows swept down at the squirrel, which they did without mercy. At length the squirrel stopped running up the tree and de- feated the crows simply by running round the trunk. When the crows came one on either side after a minute or two of this, the squirrel suddenly changed his tactics and went head- long down the trunk, pausing short of the ground and remaining completely motionless until the crows gave up the game and he was able to go about his business in peace. He had evidently suffered this sort of persecution before.
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