Ankle deep in pine husks

[martyd]

Hello Folks, we have a huge Pine tree at the south side of our yard. Below the tree is our deck that is 25 feet by about 60 feet. The pine tree and our deck overlook a deep gully about 200 feet across. This gully is full of mature Black Walnuts, Beech, Burr Oak and Silver Maple. The point is we have never had our huge squirrel population eat so many pine nuts before. The chewed up pine husks and discarded shells are everywhere on the deck. If we didn’t sweep the pine cone waste into the gully every day we would be ankle deep in the stuff. We have never ever in all the years that we have been here had any of these pine cone dismemberments before. There are old brown dried out cones everywhere in the gully and around the property (from years past) that are a testament to the fact that our squirrels have never touched these pine cones before. Our grandchildren gather them by the hundreds and toss them into the gulley. With all the other nut bearing tree species that we have, why is there this huge feast on the pine seeds this year?

[BigNibbler]

Has there been any change to soil treatment, fertilizers, insecticides, pesticides, water treatments?

[martyd]

nope not anything like that. Thanks for the question

[Fireweed]

Do you usually have grey squirrels and now you have some red squirrels, too? Or have you always had both?

[martyd]

Hi, thank you for the question. We have had black, grey and I assume red squirrels, (they are black with reddish brown tails) We have been here for 15 years and have never seen anything like this. It is actually kind of humorous as it is snowing cone flakes. As mentioned before there are hundreds of old brown dried up cones from years before in and around our gulley to prove that our squirrels rarely touch these cones. However this year they are almost crazed with them.