SQUIRRELS AND BIRDS.
[To THR EDITOR Or THE " SPECTAT0R...9 SIR,—I think a curious bit of observation of the habits of the squirrel will interest your readers. It is in a letter from a Scotch gamekeeper who has a love of animals and a habit of studying their ways, quite in the vein of a scientific observer. It is sent me by "H. C. B." :—" I received your letter regarding the squirrel. You are quite right in supposing that it was an exaggerated idea that they do a lot of damage to trees. I have often been told the same by foresters, and have been requested to shoot them ; but as I never shoot wantonly, I have often studied the habits of the beautiful little animal. There are a great many of them here ; they used to shoot them before I came, but since I explained to Colonel F. they are not molested. The food of the squirrel is cones or seed of nearly all kinds of trees that we have here,—spruce-pine, Scotch fir or pine, larch, oak, hazel, beech, and elm. I have never seen a squirrel eating or destroying the young shoots of forest-trees, and there are thousands of young trees here, Scotch fir or pine, the kind they are blamed for destroying, and I am safe to say I could not point out one tree damaged by a squirrel. The squirrel also eats fungi, of particularly the red kind. The only thing that vexes me sometimes with, him, is that he will rob a nest, and it is always the nest of the chaffinch. Why he does it is, I think, because the chaffinch makes such a noise when it sees a squirrel at that season. The squirrel wants to get it away from the vicinity of its own nest so as not to be itself betrayed, as it is not for food, because it only breaks eggs or kills the young, and it does not eat them. There is no doubt it is for a purpose, and Nature has given it that great instinct. I regret to say there are so many pretty animals and birds destroyed (from mere fanciful whims) that do no damage. The poor heron used to be shot here, too, but now we have a nice colony of them and they are so pretty and amusing when they have their nests." If the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has a medal, I think that one ought to be given to a man who, like this Scotch gamekeeper, stops the killing of harmless animals.
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