DESCRIPTION

White belly, red-brown to blackish-brown back, with a long bushy tail that hangs on its back when perched. In winter, hair brushes in the ears.

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HABITAT

It is a diurnal animal that lives mainly in trees in a living space of 20 to 40 ares. It lives in a nest in the shape of a ball, placed in the fork of a tree. Its nest often has two doors: a service door to the east and an emergency door to the west. An accomplished acrobat, the squirrel has no equal to climb, run and jump from tree to tree. Its tail serves as a rudder and stabilizer and the soles of rough feet prevent them from sliding on the wet bark. It goes down the tree trunks with his head forward. It is also a good swimmer.

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WAY OF LIFE

Squirrels have vital territories that overlap. Their surface may vary according to the period of the reproductive cycle and the available food resources, but on average those of males are larger than those of females. In addition, they overlap each other more. Although the squirrel is a solitary animal, each individual can communicate with his congeners using a multitude of signals: visual (tail movements, posture), olfactory, tactile and vocal. There is a hierarchy within populations, with adults dominating juveniles and subadults; males dominating females. The squirrel is an exceptional case among the mammals of our regions in that it is totally diurnal. In summer, it is mostly busy during the first two hours of the day and before dusk, when it is cooler. In winter, however, it comes out during the hottest hours, around noon. In winter, he sleeps in his nest for weeks. From time to time, he wakes up, fetches a little food in one of his hiding places that he has filled during the summer, then goes back to sleep. He has several nests on his territory. During the summer and autumn, it is makes himself a of true pantry possibly totaling up to 125 kg of food. Some provisions are exploited in winter when food runs out, but others are forgotten. This accumulation of seeds and their germination contribute to the regeneration of the forest. The main predator of the squirrel is the marten.

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FOOD

The red squirrel prefers hazelnuts. It nibbles all kinds of nuts and tree seeds, especially conifers. It likes mushrooms, fruits, young buds, bark and sap of trees, sometimes also eggs, insects, preferably locusts and larvae of beetles. It eats wild berries. It likes poisonous mushrooms and cocoons of ants. It can not live without water.
It forgets, in unlikely places, large stores of food and wastes more than it eats.

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BREEDING

In spring, males fight furiously, all teeth and claws out. The winner takes his hard-won female and they build together the cozy nest where, forty days later, two to seven cubs will be born. The newborns, pink, wrinkled, naked, deaf and blind, measure about 7 cm long and weigh about 6 to 7 g. A week elapses before their first hairs appear. But at 10 days, already their coat is provided. They are fed breast milk for 40 days. From the fortieth day, they "bite" the food of their mother. At 10 weeks, they leave the house but do not leave their mother until around the 18th week. Their red coat is so long and silky. They moult at 11 months and can reproduce at about one year old.

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THREAT

It is a protected animal. For nearly 25 years, it is forbidden to hunt, but unfortunately, a large number of them are victims of the car. Although less effective than the gray squirrel, foresters appreciate its presence since it facilitates reforestation by forgetting in the ground many of the seeds that it hides.

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