Nature, Naturally: Squirrel 'Dreys' Weather The Storm

Long Island was visited by a bomb of a nor’easter on Saturday. Early Sunday morning, the land was white, the winds had settled down to 20 knots, the outside temperature was between 10 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit — a few trucks and pickups passed by on Noyac Road.

Yes, it could have been far worse, as in New England, where the tempest was still carrying on. But for us on eastern Long Island, it would certainly go down as a biggie. What happened to “global warming”? The truth is, a few more storms like this one and global warming would be set back on its heels.

It was too cold to venture out. Clumps of snow partially filled the white pine branches; a bevy of white gulls in Noyac Bay forming a nearshore circle to the north was the only sign of life. By mid afternoon, the wind had dropped off, a crow or two visited the gulls, a small titmouse or two began forging aloft, and one of my gray squirrels popped out of one of the sequestered nests and went about its business of surviving.

Without going outside, I checked the trees through the windows. One, two, three — all of the squirrel nests, i.e. “dreys,” were none the worse for the storm. They were 50 to 60 feet up in the oaks surrounding the house. I imagined that the two or three adult squirrels and the helpless babies managed as nicely as I did to ride out the storm.

I had surveyed by car the number of dreys in Southampton’s northern hamlets east of Hampton Bays and west of Sag Harbor on Thursday afternoon, counting some 50 or more in trees bordering 15 miles of paved roads, including Sandy Hollow, North Sea, Noyac and 10 others.

Here on Long Island, gray squirrels and flying squirrels, in the absence of tree holes, build and rebuild these dreys, about the size of a basketball, annually, sometimes more frequently.

Squirrels know as much about the stability of trees and their limbs as we do. They spend a day or two putting each drey together — the outside is crude and bulky, consisting of leaves and twigs, while the inside is soft and comfortable, fashioned from grasses and other finds.

Almost invariably, they are constructed in the crooks of sturdy branch bases. Woe to the lazy squirrel that doesn’t follow the rules and just stuffs a bunch of vegetation together, only to see it crumble, and crumble with it, in a windstorm.

We don’t have other species of American squirrels, namely, fox and red, on Long Island, but they are common upstate and elsewhere throughout the forested portions of the country. Europe and Asia have squirrels as well. These also construct dreys. A marsupial opossum species in Australia and other parts of nearby Oceana is the only other mammal thus far known to construct dreys.

There is some evidence accumulating that the elevation of dreys is related to the severity of the winter; in other words, squirrels are able to save some time descending to the ground if the winter is going to be mild. It makes sense — why build something you live in 50 feet up, when you can get by in mild years having it only 25 feet up? You save energy in climbing and descending. You can get to the birdfeeders first to get the seeds and other goodies that people put out come winter.

Another telltale observation gathered from Thursday’s reconnoiter is that there are almost no dreys where there are no oaks or nut trees. A two-mile drive through a very heavily treed segment of Millstone Brook Road off North Sea Road produced hardly any squirrel dreys. Piney areas also are mostly dreyless.

Also, dreys are much more common along roads in residential communities. For example, it’s hard to go more than 100 yards along Big Fresh Pond Road in North Sea without spotting a drey or two. This last road, in fact, had the most dreys per quarter mile when compared to all of the other roads surveyed. Houses mean human residents, and many of those residents feed birds with sunflower seeds and other goodies during the winter.

In certain years, especially in sparse acorn production years, squirrels begin to roam far and wide searching for acorns and other nutty fruit, which just isn’t there. That is when highways become littered with their bodies. Such poor acorn years happen every five to seven years; oaks have to live too, and this is their way of surviving to produce little ones, which eventually will replace big ones.

So there you have it. Those strange clumps of dead leaves, sticks and other vegetative parts shaped into a ball-like nesting structure and stuck in a tree crotch well above terra firma are home to adult and baby squirrels. Squirrels are mostly harmless mammals, some say as smart as humans, and good to have around.

If you have had squirrels on the ground around your house this winter, you just might have a drey or two as well.