Kaibab Squirrely Park Ranger

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My World Tuesday - Predator and Prey

Kaibab squirrel
Sunday morning I lead a nature walk with only three visitors, all avid birders. (Sometimes these walks can be up to 30 people.) I’d been talking about the Kaibab Squirrel and we were all keeping our eyes open to see one.

Copper’s Hawk
We stopped along the trail to study some fossils and up in a Quaking Aspen we saw a Copper’s Hawk. I know, not a very good photo but the best I could do. Hawks are a predator of Kaibab Squirrel so we were very surprised when we saw one leaping gracefully along right under the hawk’s tree.

Copper’s Hawk nest
We all had our cameras ready for the hawk to swoop down on the squirrel, but it didn’t happen. Could be the hawk was busy as a hummingbird was flying all around it.

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Ghost Squirrel

Nowhere else on earth will you see the likes of Kaibab squirrel. Although you may meet its cousin Abert on the South Rim or even into central Arizona and New Mexico. Both are tassel-eared squirrels that haven’t seen each other in a very long time because of the Grand Canyon. There is a subtle difference to their look, Abert has a white belly and only the underside of its tail is white.

Almost all visitors to the North Rim want to know where to see the illusive Kaibab Squirrel. I usually send them to the campground. But all I have to do is watch quietly around my RV and will usually see one or two daily.

Kaibab squirrel lives in a rather small territory in the Kaibab forest and has a definite love affair with Ponderosa Pines. They build pine needle nests in them which they use all year, not just to raise young, but also to hide in during bad weather or from a predator like Goshawk. However, Kaibab doesn’t usually run up the tree it lives in. Instead it jumps from nearby trees with crossing branches so as not to advertise where it lives.

Kaibab eats the ever ripening nut in the pine cones all summer and into fall yet never caches away a thing for winter when it has to resort to twig tips, minus the unwanted cone bundles, which it chews the bark off and eats the living phloem beneath, then leaves behind piles of chew sticks. Ponderosa has a terp content like turpentine and Kaibab looks for the sweeter trees. It’s probably happy when spring arrives and new flowers appear loaded with pollen that gives it a yellow nose.

Plus its nose leads it to another food source which grows symbiotically with Ponderosa’s roots, a microrizal fungi, which maybe even you have eaten. Truffles grow about 1-3 inches underground and Kaibab digs them up to eat. However, the spores of the truffles don’t digest, so Kaibab leaves them behind when pooping and that will increase the fungi which helps the tree. These two have a pretty good thing going.