Back in January I posted a
picture of a Myrtle the squirrel collecting leaves to pad her winter nest with. As the weather is warming up the squirrels have been moving from their nests inside hollow trees to their summer digs, big leafy affairs high in the canopy. Usually you can't even see these until the autumn when the leaves drop and reveal the locations of the dreys, as they are officially called.
This year, though, it happened that three squirrels decided to build one in a tree behind our house that fortuitously happened to be in direct line of sight from our back door. At least I assume it is fortuitous. Maybe they planned it that way, but from their point of view the back door is in direct line of sight of the drey and they can see whether we've put any nuts out for them just by poking a head out of the nest!
It's still a little hard to see, but the drey is the bundle of green leaves around the fork in the tree near the centre of the picture above. Here's a closer look.
I happened to notice the construction project going on early one Friday morning and as I checked throughout the day I could see at least three different squirrels cutting leaves and bringing them back to stuff inside the nest and pad it out. There is one in the photo above, in fact, off to the left of the nest.
They all seemed to be males, from a group Mrs Walles and I have been calling the interlopers since they only turned up on our patch this year. Mixed-sex nesting is not unknown among squirrels, apparently, but as the spring comes on the females like to have nests to themselves to bring up their young. I suspect that the interlopers, finding themselves homeless, banded together to build themselves a bachelor pad. It's still there, shaded by the trees, no doubt a very pleasant summer home for the crew who built it.
