At Home in the Supermarket

So, I got to thinking, do any birds take advantage of the fact that some trees (oaks and beeches, particularly) hang on to their dried leaves in the fall?

I did a Google search, and found that some birds to favor certain species of trees, but they like trees with features that support their particular type of nest – a strong fork, say, or the likelihood of it providing a hole.

Then I realized that, duh, by the time the leaves dropped not only have the birds in this area already raised their young, but most of them have already headed south for the winter.

Stubborn as I am, I started wondering about mammals, and if they might show favoritism to a certain tree, since they stick around. Gray squirrels, for example. Do they tend to build their nests in oak trees so that they stay hidden well into early winter?

Plus, a gray squirrel nest in an oak tree would be kind of like setting up a home in the supermarket.

I live at a high enough elevation that there aren’t many oak trees around here, nor many gray squirrels. I turned to my handy Stokes Nature Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior for an answer.

Donald and Lillian Stokes say that gray squirrels tend to use their “leaf nests” (those wads of leaves and twigs stuck up high in the branches of trees) in the summer. They tend to retire to tree-hole dens in the winter.

So even squirrels don’t take advantage of the superior autumn camouflaging traits of some trees over others.