Jack Bowling wrote (about alleged Peregrine taking squirrels from Seattle):

>We can only hope. Anything that can cut back the E. Gray Squirrel
>population such that the Douglas' Squirrel has a chance of recuperating
>from their staggering losses of the past 20 years gets my vote for good
>citizen of the year.

My guess is that the Douglas squirrel has disappeared in most areas because
the conifer forests on which they depend have been fragmented too much. It
may be that gray squirrels play a part, once the DOSQ (now I'm doing it
with mammals!) numbers are considerably reduced, but GRSQs don't seem to
thrive in conifer forests, where there isn't much for them to eat.
Instead, they're adapted to broadleaf trees (not to mention bird feeders,
of course), such as come to predominate in most cities.

I was surprised several years ago on the Long Beach Peninsula to see both
Douglas and eastern gray squirrels at the same feeders in a fairly heavily
forested area. I don't know if that was a temporary situation (and, before
that, I didn't know there were gray squirrels in that area).

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416