Unfun facts, I’ve been feeding the birds for several years and obviously 95% of that went to the squirrels and there were dozens and they all disappeared last year. I found a few pieces of squirrel corpses around, something killed them all and ate them. Have no idea what it was.
My last house bordered on a big undeveloped green space; we had , as we called them, ‘owl years’ and ‘bunny years’. You could see the pattern clear as day and predict it to a certain extent. If there were a ton of bunnies out in our yard at dusk in the spring, the following year was going to be an owl year, ostensibly because the eating was real good. If there were hardly any bunnies out there, the following year was almost definitely going to be a bunny year because the owls moved on or starved over the winter.
But there was no balance, that’s the weird thing. It was almost binary…but it wasn’t directly cyclical. We would know by early spring if this was going to be one of those “we need to put fencing around every single flower and plant in our garden” years, or if there were enough owls around to eat all the bunnies and give our garden a break, but it didn’t alternate in any pattern we could tell. We just had to wait and see how many bunnies we had out there at dusk. There were far more bunny years than owl years, but whereas in owl years you would hear them out there hooting all night long, in bunny years…nothing.
Tangentially…it was always a squirrel year. IDK if the owls didn’t care for squirrel or what but only the bunnies and the owls were locked into this relationship…the chipmunks and squirrels were unaffected. The owls just really only wanted bunnies I guess lol.
The chipmunks were cute and didn’t hurt nothing (though their pre-dawn chittering was fuckin loud for how little they are, would wake us up even with the windows closed) but the squirrels were true assholes. We invested lord knows how much money into squirrel proof feeders and they would retaliate by eventually getting around the defenses and then knocking the shit down on the ground so they could empty our feeders in an afternoon. They would rip open the suet cages and just drag the whole block up into a tree and gorge themselves on it, and if they couldn’t open the cage they’d steal it in the cage lol
Even my wife, who is like a disney princess and wants to go find a clearing and sing and cuddle all the animals, would chuck hickory nut shells at them whenever she was out there so the birds got something.
That’s terrible for you and the squirrels but some apex predator’s babies are getting really well nourished. Or it’s also possible many squirrels noped out of the area after a few were devoured.
Unfun facts, I’ve been feeding the birds for several years and obviously 95% of that went to the squirrels and there were dozens and they all disappeared last year. I found a few pieces of squirrel corpses around, something killed them all and ate them. Have no idea what it was.
My last house bordered on a big undeveloped green space; we had , as we called them, ‘owl years’ and ‘bunny years’. You could see the pattern clear as day and predict it to a certain extent. If there were a ton of bunnies out in our yard at dusk in the spring, the following year was going to be an owl year, ostensibly because the eating was real good. If there were hardly any bunnies out there, the following year was almost definitely going to be a bunny year because the owls moved on or starved over the winter.
But there was no balance, that’s the weird thing. It was almost binary…but it wasn’t directly cyclical. We would know by early spring if this was going to be one of those “we need to put fencing around every single flower and plant in our garden” years, or if there were enough owls around to eat all the bunnies and give our garden a break, but it didn’t alternate in any pattern we could tell. We just had to wait and see how many bunnies we had out there at dusk. There were far more bunny years than owl years, but whereas in owl years you would hear them out there hooting all night long, in bunny years…nothing.
Tangentially…it was always a squirrel year. IDK if the owls didn’t care for squirrel or what but only the bunnies and the owls were locked into this relationship…the chipmunks and squirrels were unaffected. The owls just really only wanted bunnies I guess lol.
Man! Those damn squirrels resist everything!
The chipmunks were cute and didn’t hurt nothing (though their pre-dawn chittering was fuckin loud for how little they are, would wake us up even with the windows closed) but the squirrels were true assholes. We invested lord knows how much money into squirrel proof feeders and they would retaliate by eventually getting around the defenses and then knocking the shit down on the ground so they could empty our feeders in an afternoon. They would rip open the suet cages and just drag the whole block up into a tree and gorge themselves on it, and if they couldn’t open the cage they’d steal it in the cage lol
Even my wife, who is like a disney princess and wants to go find a clearing and sing and cuddle all the animals, would chuck hickory nut shells at them whenever she was out there so the birds got something.
That’s terrible for you and the squirrels but some apex predator’s babies are getting really well nourished. Or it’s also possible many squirrels noped out of the area after a few were devoured.
The circle of life is truly a beautiful thing.
Damn, that sounds like a retribution killing.