Saturday, April 12, 2014

Squirrels pruning trees

Our local gray squirrels have covered the side of road with clippings from the box elders. This isn't the best picture but it shows that the clippings are 3 - 10 cm and each clipping has several flowers. I'm familiar with this behavior from one of my colleagues, Mike Steele, who described this behavior with silver maples. Squirrels are thought to prune the trees to increase seed size of the remaining seeds.  

Whatever the reason, squirrels have spent a ton of time and effort and exposure to predators doing this! And I find this interesting because there's no immediate pay off for the squirrels (but then neither is there with caching acorns). 



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