Subject: [Tweeters] Squrrel kills a towhee
Date: Feb 24 01:16:35 2012
From: Rob Sandelin - nwnature1 at gmail.com


One of my rainy day pastimes is watching the bird scrimmage at the feeder
out my window. From time to time a resident Douglas squirrel decides to try
to chase off the competition and goes madly dashing from one bird to
another. The birds simply fly hop a short distance and when the squirrel
goes after another bird they hop back to about where they were. Its sort of
like a mad game of tag where the squirrel is always "it".

Yesterday there were 3 towhees, a couple of song sparrows and a few Juncos
feeding on the ground when the squirrel showed. For about ten minutes the
mammal dashed from bird to bird, back and forth, stopping occasionally to
review his progress, or lack of. There was a towhee which seemed a bit slow
to fly, whether it was just not concerned about the squirrel too much or ill
is unclear. About the third time the squirrel ran at this bird, it fly
hopped a short distance, the squirrel turned and started going the other
direction. The towhee immediately flew back to original place and the
squirrel pivoted, made a 180 and in one hop jumped on the towhee. There were
several seconds of feathers flying and squirrel bird rolling around when the
squirrel stepped back and the towhee was down on the ground. The squirrel
sniffed it, then turned and chased a sparrow and continued chasing birds. I
sat in the window watching the towhee on the ground and I kept expecting it
to get up. It never did. I finally went and checked it, and it was cold dead
with an apparent broken neck.

I have heard of squirrels taking baby birds at nests. I have never heard of
one killing an adult. Anybody have any experience with this? Or do I have
the only killer squirrel?

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer, Teacher
Snohomish County.