Wild St. Albert – Our friend, the squirrel

I admit it – I'm nuts for squirrels.

I love their clever paws, twitching tails and piercing cries. I love the way they devour conifer cones, scale stucco walls and sprint along fence-lines. I know of no greater joy than to watch a red squirrel sitting on the branch of a spruce tree munching on a pine cone, the soft fall of cone scales just barely audible in the still of winter.

Red squirrels are some of the most visible and audible animals in St. Albert. Dancing through the trees and making action-hero leaps between distant branches, their acrobatic antics are a sight to behold.

Red squirrels have adapted extremely well to our backyards, says Jim Butler, a retired wildlife biologist at the University of Alberta. "They're one of the first things we hear chattering in the morning and one of the last things we hear at night."

Opportunists, red squirrels are known to raid human constructs such as bird feeders for easy meals. Butler recalls how an orphaned squirrel he raised in his home once tried to swipe a slice of pizza from his kitchen table. The pizza was so big that the squirrel was dragged off the table by its weight.

"He was certainly very ambitious!" he recalls, with a laugh. "I did give him a big piece of the crust."

According to Tamara Eder's Squirrels of North America, red squirrels can be identified by their rusty red coat, creamy belly and big tail. They also have white rings around their eyes. Found across Canada, they're the only tree squirrel found in the Edmonton region.

Red squirrels have three typical calls that they use in different situations, says Stan Boutin, a biologist at the University of Alberta who has studied red squirrels in the Yukon for decades.

The machine-gun-like sound that they make while perched high in a tree is called a "rattle," for example, and is used to demarcate territory — red squirrels are fiercely territorial, and will often fight if they meet in a backyard.

The short, sharp squeaks squirrels lob at me when I stop and stare is known as a "bark," Boutin continues, and is the squirrel's way of saying "I see you!" to passing predators.

Least common is the "screech," Boutin says, which is a more explosive version of the bark. "That's more of a true alarm call," he says, and is usually done when an aerial predator startles a squirrel. This often leads to a chain of screeches from nearby squirrels as they pass the warning along.

Red squirrels get their agility in part from their wrists, Boutin says, which they can disarticulate to grip any branch or surface. They also have big eyes for navigation, long tails for balance and muscular hind-legs for leaps.

Wild squirrels live in spherical grass nests during the winter to stay warm, Boutin says. Usually located high up a tree near the trunk in the wild, they are often found in garages in the city.

Red squirrels will have spent most of the last few months gathering food for the winter, Boutin says — mostly in the form of conifer cones. In order to save time, many will hurl harvested cones from the top of a tree to the ground for later collection. This can lead to waterfalls of cones cascading down the sides of trees or a cone bouncing off your head.

Most cones are stored in a midden, according to the government of the Yukon — a depot made from masses of cone scales left over from a squirrel's lunch. Often used year after year, these middens can be up to a metre deep and 20 square metres in size, and contain up to 16,000 cones. You'll often see squirrels disappearing underground in the winter to get at these stores.

Red squirrels are food for many animals, Boutin says, and help distribute spruce tree seeds. They've also helped his team study evolution (they track genetic lines in squirrels) and climate change — red squirrels now breed about 18 days sooner than they did 10 years ago due in part to earlier spring weather, their research suggests.

Butler says he isn't surprised by the wide appeal of squirrels. "There's something very aesthetically cute about a squirrel."

I'll probably never get tired of red squirrels. My neighbour, who has one living in his roof, might have a different opinion.