The apples are red, and there are beautiful chocolate coloured cattails on Settlement Road. There too, glistening in the morning sun, you can see the mottled jewelweed flower and remember the days of rubbing its leaves on your itchy skin to relieve the pestering itch of mosquitos.
Red squirrels eat it all: Nuts, seeds, buds, bark, fruits, mushrooms (which are often hung to dry in tree branches), bird's eggs, nestlings, voles, young rabbits, frogs, salamanders, and insects. In fact, they will eat anything that will not eat them.
Red squirrels are usually born in April, after a seven-week gestation. The nest into which they were born would have been built of twigs and leaves or could have been in the hollow of a tree. They are blind, furless, tiny, pink, creatures and would have two to four siblings. Their eyes would not open until they were twenty-seven days old and in another three days they would be fully furred. Red squirrels moult twice each year. Their thick dense winter coat that grew in September gives way to the lighter shorter summer fur in the spring. Only 25% of the litter will survive to adulthood but those that do, can live to be ten to twelve years old. The usual life expectancy of a red squirrel is three to five years.
The young squirrels will need to establish their territory and find or make suitable shelter for the winter, for they, unlike other squirrels will not hibernate.
Jewelweed also known as Touch-me-not
Queen Anne's Lace
Red Squirrel
Goldenrod
