Sciurus carolinensis

Well, it definitely is spring weather. The deer have left the sunflower seed feeder, and who should replace these hooved mammals? Tis the grey squirrels. See how they inhabitat our feeder by clicking the movie below.

Like many members of the family Sciuridae, the Eastern Gray Squirrel is a scatter-hoarder; it hoards food in numerous small caches for later recovery. Some caches are quite temporary, especially those made near the site of a sudden abundance of food which can be retrieved within hours or days for re-burial in a more secure site. Others are more permanent and are not retrieved until months later. It has been estimated that each squirrel makes several thousand caches each season.

The squirrels have very accurate spatial memory for the locations of these caches, and use distant and nearby landmarks to retrieve them. Smell is used once the squirrel is within a few centimeters of the cache. It is one of very few mammalian species that can descend a tree face-first. It does this by turning his feet so that the claws of its hindpaws are backward pointing and can grip the tree bark.