Grey squirrel stealing patio gravel!

[amstone]

Hi

I'm off work this week and have been in the house most of the day..I've witnessed the strangest activity in my back garden! A cheeky grey squirrel runs up to the house from the bottom of the garden, sniffs the ground for a few seconds then carefully selects a rather large piece of gravel (c. 2cm in length, smooth,more of a small pebble), puts it in his mouth, finds another the same size and puts that in his mouth too, then runs off down to the conifers at the bottom of the garden!! He seems to have been doing this for most of the day! Any ideas as to why....? I thought maybe he was mistaking the small pebbles for peanuts (he did rather nicely from my brid feeder last winter) but now I'm wondering if he is using them for 'building' purposes...I have read that dreys are usually made from twigs/leaves etc but maybe he is the David Wilson of the squirrel world???!!!

Thanks

[sunnydale]

Hi amstone and welcome to WAB

It's the first time I've heard of such behaviour from a Squirrel, so I'm afraid I cant shed any light!

Just thought I'd say 'hello' instead!

Tracey

[mbaldw]

Interesting behaviour! Did you happen to see what the squirrel was doing with the stones (i.e. piling them up, putting them inside a tree etc?)

Cheers,
Marc.

[amstone]

Originally Posted by mbaldw

Interesting behaviour! Did you happen to see what the squirrel was doing with the stones (i.e. piling them up, putting them inside a tree etc?)

Cheers,
Marc.

Hi Marc

The first time I saw him do it, I had assumed he'd picked up something edible from the patio and seem to recall he tried to bury something in the lawn on his way back down the garden! However once I'd realised what he was actually picking up, thereafter I only saw him run back down the garden and scurried under the conifers (ie I didn't see him climb up the tree with them). I have been out today so haven't seen him but will be watching out again. It is most peculiar - I can only think he is mistaking them for nuts but surely he's not that daft? I've had a quick look at your site and you say squirrels sometimes gnaw on bones for minerals, and possibly to sharpen teeth - might be something similar going on here? There is nothing I can see online..the mystery remains!

Alison

[mbaldw]

Hi Alison,

I was thinking along the lines of mineral intake (although it's conceivable that they could be used to sharpen teeth). In his 1987 book The Natural History of Squirrels John Gurnell mentions that squirrels will sometimes eat soil, which he suggests is probably for roughage. Similarly, in a paper to the Journal of Mammalogy during 1978, Harmon Weeks Jr. and Charles Kirkpatric looked at the sodium budget of fox squirrels (Sciurus niger) and woodchucks (Marmota monax) on a military reserve in Indiana; both species licked road salt and the latter were observed to eat salt-laden gravel at the roadside. Apparently, there were two peaks in this 'sodium drive' behaviour, one in April and the second in September.

If you'll permit me to reproduce your post, I will ask around.

Cheers,
Marc.

[amstone]

Hi Marc

Yes please do use my post as you are probably much, much better placed to find an answer (if there is one!) than I.

Here is a photo of the gravel/pebbles on my patio -he seemed to take smooth oval-shaped ones similar to the one next to the 2p. I did wonder how on earth he managed to fit them in his mouth!!



Fingers crossed that someone knows - though I guess animals are entitled to beguile us every now and then!

Thanks
Alison

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