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Hello all,
I recently took a greater interest in my back two acres here in western Michigan. The maple, birch, and sassafras have matured pretty densely and the abundance of squirrels has proven to be very entertaining from the view of my computer desk behind the big sliding glass doors.
Naturally, I checked out their habits online and found myself at a site that sells squirrel nests cobbled together from old automobile tires. I seemed like a very clever idea, and they are very reasonably priced, but I was much too impatient to wait for one to arrive in the mail. I went to my local muffler shop/auto service center and sure enough, they had a free tire graveyard next to the big green dumpsters. I found a big fat SUV tire with the tallest sidewall I could find and claimed my prize.

*If anyone is interested in building one I would have to recommend ordering one redi-made from http://www.squirrelhouses.com
Unless you are pretty confident around power tools and extremely sharp knives, it's just not worth the dirty and heavy labor involved to tear into a passenger car tire. They are, naturally, EXTREMELY resistant to cutting. If you do want to try it, let me know and I'll mention a few tips that make it easier.*

I was a little worried about having to put the nest up forty to sixty feet in the air like the rest of the twig nests in the yard since I wouldn't really be able to enjoy the activity without binoculars. Then I reasoned, hell, if these guys have a reputation for nesting in eaves and soffits, they can't be too shy about inhabiting a good nest space even if it's close to human activity. So I put the nest in the crotch of a beechnut tree about twenty feet high and twenty feet from the my back deck.
For about a week they utterly ignored it. They even seemed to avoid it. Perhaps they thought it was an owl nest? Some new species of.. I don't know what? Finally their indifference to my hard labor and best intentions drove me try bait. I threw in a few tight handfulls of dried soft leaves, and hung a little pot of nuts and seeds and chunky peanut butter from the front of the nest and then retired to my desk to wait.
Took them about half the day to locate the bait, but they wasted little time after that. There were half a dozen of them swirling about the nest for about an hour and occasional fisticuffs. When the action died down about another four hours later, a small black female? and a large tawny black/sable male? had taken up residence against anyone else willing to come within three feet of the place. I noticed a dark splotch of wet just beneath the nest on the trunk of the beechnut and wondered if it was blood, rainwater, or what. Back to the internet I discovered that the male must have marked his nesting home with urine. There was a suprising amount of it! He wet it again today, so I guess he's pretty serious.
I've been watching them snipping off birch leaves and squirreling them back into the nest. He's off foraging and she's just squirting in and out of the hole and racing around the tree and back again and sometimes just sitting perched in the hole with her paws under her chin like she just can't get over her luck.
It's always irritated me that I've never had an opportunity to watch the activity of a squirrels nest. They're just too high and obscured from the eye. This nest is turning out to be such extraordiary fun that I just couldn't resist this long missive to
y'all. I can't wait for the little ones to show up!
I'll be posting anything new or interesting, and asking advice where it comes up.
Thanks for providing the board!

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