Around this time of year, when most trees are bare and winter is near, do you ever look up and see a ball of leaves high in the branches? If you have spotted one of these leaf balls you might be standing at the doorstep of a squirrel’s home!
Most ground squirrels hibernate in winter, but not the Eastern grey squirrel. Eastern grey squirrels stay active all year round. Throughout the winter, you can see them running around digging small holes in the snow looking for nuts that they hid in the summer and fall. Eastern grey squirrels stay warm at night in nests. They will use existing tree cavities, but if none are available they will build a leaf ball home called a ‘drey’. These balls of leaves actually have three parts: the base; the outer layer and the inner core. Squirrels build the base for their nest out of sticks so that the nest has lots of support. The outer layer of leaves looks messy and fluffy but it really helps to block the cold wind. Inside, the nest has an inner, warmer core of leaves tightly woven or packed together with grass and thin strips of tree bark. In the extreme cold, two squirrels may share the same nest to help stay warm.
Flickr Credit benjamin sTone
I see so many of these and now I actually know what they are!!
i like squirrels.
same!!
My grandparents have 5 eastern gray squirrels living in or near their yard and I feed them peanuts and homemade bird food that I made for all the birds at their house
so cool! at my house, there are bunnies, squirrels, chipmunks, chickadees, cardinals, blue jays, starlings, and brown birds. we feed them peanuts and birdseed mixes.
I always see these in trees and I didn’t know until I read this
Learning new things everytime
I had no idea there were so many different types of squirrels!
I’ve seen those.
cool!
cute
wow i never knew they live in nests