We moved to a new place 2-3 years ago and “adopted” a very pregnant black squirrel by putting nuts out for her through a very cold winter. After the 3 babies were old enough, she showed them where we leave nuts but then she disappeared and left the nest to them. We are now on the 3rd generation and, each time, the parents leave and the young stay. Is this behavior everybody knows about, or are my squirrels odd, or am I the first to notice this pattern?
I’m considering resorting to this with my own kids but human housing is so expensive these days.
We also feed the squirrels whenever there is snow on the ground, but have not yet noticed this type of behavior. Ours are tree squirrels and we do have a ton of them in the neighborhood.
We have a lot of squirrels that come to our feeder and some are at least 2 years old, we can tell because on had it’s tail cut or torn down to a stub, that looks like a bunny tail, and another from the same year) that had just the hairr stripped from the top of it’s tail, now there is a little fur on it ,but it is shorter than the rest of it’s tail. This is the first year(in the 46 years )we have lived here that a black squirrel came.
My mother enjoyed feeding squirrels and birds by tossing bread and crackers out of her back door onto the patio. We noticed that the behavior of these animals returning to feed was continued by the younger generations. Animals tend to go where the food is abundant as evidenced by the rats that eventually came to dine at mom’s patio area. At that point she said, “Oh to hell with those damn birds and squirrels.”
