Red squirrels with a taste for antlers

For our first 29 years in this house we didn’t see a single red squirrel in the garden, but since May this year they have become daily visitors. The wooden feeder boxes on the apple trees have been a big attraction, and watching the squirrels push up the lids with their heads and reach in to get the peanuts can often be amusing.

However, some of them persist in visiting a wire feeder that was put out for birds, despite the difficulty of getting the nuts out. When the squirrels are at the feeders, I have noticed that a couple of mallard immediately head over to the bottom of the tree, to pick up any nuts or fragments they might let drop.

Someone in the strath told me that they had seen squirrels gnaw discarded deer antlers. On the Isle of Rum I had observed red deer, both stags and hinds, doing this to get calcium and other minerals – but squirrels? That intrigued me. So I took a red deer antler from my collection and tied it to the apple tree between the two feeders.

Nothing happened for a few weeks until, one September morning, a squirrel at one of the wooden boxes suddenly darted along the branch and started gnawing away at the antler. Since then, I have seen two different squirrels getting their mineral “fix” there.

The apples on this tree are still small and green looking but, given the way the blackbirds have been attacking the ones that fell off in the high winds, they are clearly ripe enough for them. Last week, to my surprise, I saw a squirrel pull an apple off a branch and disappear with it.

I am now experimenting with larger apples split in two and pinned near the antler. Hopefully, the squirrels will take to them, as it means that once this tree’s crop has gone over we can buy some and put in their place. A red squirrel larder of peanuts, antler and apples.