Owls might help; having red-tail hawks might scare them but not much more: the red-tails I’ve seen chasing squirrels around Boston Common don’t look like they could lift the tourist-fattened chinchilla-squirrels they have on the Common and in the Public Garden. The squirrels there are so familiar with what humans are good for that if you even just stop to look at your phone, they approach you thinking you’d like to feed them.
Good luck getting them away from your barrels; I’ve tried heavy duct tape and they went through that of course. And as far as using this kind of stuff to dissuade squirrels from chewing on barrels and bird feeders, it sounds like the squirrels just put the stuff on their donuts as a condiment:
And btw, the squirrels-in-parks thing we’ve done to ourselves:
True story; I once saw a hawk eating a squirrel on the lawn of the Pitt student union. Most of the on-lookers were shocked and It did not give a single eff about flying away.
Though I’ve seen hawks chasing squirrels on the Common (usually younger ones, maybe still learning what foods they and can’t lift/tussle with?), I’ve only ever seen them carrying off rats. One time I was crossing the Common and heard a weird ripping sound and looked over to see a red tail on the ground, prepping his/her rat sur l’herbe.
Not sure what this is about; are these hawks just used to being around humans, or they know they can take off with the prey if approached? I know hawks are v single-minded almost to obliviousness when it comes to hunting, anyway, but that could be their vision?
I would have assumed that hawks would be better at catching squirrels than owls. Hawks and squirrels being diurnal and owls being nocturnal, after all. Owls would be better at catching rats and mice, I’d have thought.
For a long time, I didn’t think about the eastern grey squirrel at all, but once I encountered the tufted black squirrels of Vancouver BC, and red squirrels in the Olympics, it began to bother me just how ubiquitous this single species had become.
I’m sure when the only birds one sees are pigeons, crows, and seagulls, anything else just isn’t missed. How would you know?
Now I don’t hate all squirrels, just the eastern grey.
Brings me back to the last time I was at Niagara Falls, hanging out with the fattest black squirrels while they chowed down on ground scores. Somewhere there’s a photo I took of one chomping down on a Cheeto like it was the greatest moment of its life. The neon orange was striking set against that inky black fur.
Owls are a big predator of squirrels by night, but now I actually look it up (nice feature of the Internet they have now), red tails do indeed regularly prey on grey squirrels (maybe varies a bit by place, but this seems to be the case in most places).
I’ve heard the squirrels raising alarm calls for them, so they’re def not happy about them.
Well, that U.S. history sounds just like the start of every environmental horror flick I’ve ever watched. Let’s see…first some idiots decide to upset the natural order by messing with an animal’s habitat and/or development, the population/behavior of the species goes out of control, and innocent bystanders have to deal with terrifying consequences. Finally, when the situation gets really bad, some government intervention/ultimate solution is used to wipe the critters out (the people are considered collateral damage).
On my university campus, squirrels had gone beyond raiding the trash. They were known for challenging students for the food they were carrying. In one case, a professor’s child was sitting on the grass and eating a snack when a squirrel dropped down from a tree and bit him. That poor kid got rabies shots, and students were warned to beware of squirrels when eating food outdoors.
