The snow is gone and leaves have not yet filled in the forest canopy, so it’s a great time to look at red squirrel middens. Conifer seeds make up a large percentage of the red squirrel diet, and the animals spend lots of time eating or collecting conifer cones. To get at the seeds a squirrel holds a cone in both front feet and, starting at the bottom, chews off each scale and eats the exposed seeds, spinning the cone as it works its way toward the tip. This is done with typical red squirrel energy, and the scales seem to fly out at blistering speed. The scales and cone cores accumulate around or below the feeding station, and the resulting piles of debris, called middens, can be quite sizable. The mounds in the photo contain mostly the cores and scales of Norway spruce cones. Middens this large must have accumulated over a number of years, probably during the residence of several different animals.
The hole just below the trunk of the closer tree is an entrance to an underground space where cones were stored. These food caches are often located in the spaces around the roots under the middens, but may also be in rock cavities, log piles, or even human structures. They are generally underground where the high humidity prevents the cones from opening.
Red squirrels depend on stored conifer cones for survival over the winter. In late summer and early fall conifer stands resound with the sound of objects hitting the ground as the animals nip the cones in the tree tops. Once a good supply has fallen, the squirrels descend and carry the cones to their underground storage spaces. It’s this habit of creating concentrated supplies in a limited number of locations, called larder hoarding, that allows the animals to inhabit boreal forests with long, snowy winters. Imagine the effort that would be involved if, like gray squirrels, red squirrels had to dig down through a deep snowpack to retrieve each individual food item. With its food stored in larders a red squirrel merely needs to maintain tunnels leading from the surface to the ground-level entrances.
Middens are usually located at the bases of the trees which provided the cones, indicating that the squirrels bring cones up from storage to perches higher in the tree to feed. In the photo above you can see a Norway spruce with several branches (dead but still strong enough to support a squirrel) which could have served as feeding perches. These branches, or ones nearby, are often marked by the squirrels. One such branch is shown in the photo below. The shot was taken from directly above the branch. You can see some partly eaten spruce cones on the ground below in the upper part of the photo, and the dark tree trunk in the lower right-hand area. The branch itself is liberally marked with the fresh gouges of red squirrel incisors, and there are a few older gouges from previous years. The scent compounds left in the wood would establish the resident squirrel’s ownership of that particular real estate.
Middens tell us how much red squirrels depend on conifers for their winter food supply–and it’s not just Norway spruce. Where pines, hemlocks, firs or other spruce species are more common their cones provide the bulk of the winter diet, and similar middens can be found.
In the mixed forests of central New York, middens tell us about the non-coniferous foods that red squirrels also make use of. In the photo above butternut shells with typical red squirrel entry holes are mixed with the spruce scales and cores. I’ve also found the opened shells of walnuts, acorns, and hickory nuts in red squirrel middens. And occasionally a bone fragment, with telltale incisor gouges, sits atop a midden. Red squirrels, like other small mammals, need to boost their calcium intake by chewing on bones, and a familiar feeding perch makes a fine location for a dose of minerals.
squirrels bite off oak twigs to get at the ripening acorns, and the “nip twigs” (minus acorns) can be found scattered under oak trees. The acorn remnants–shell fragments and partly eaten acorn meats–may also be found on the ground or on nearby logs or stumps where a squirrel has a good view of its surroundings while feeding.
This puzzled me at first, so I got out my magnifier and took a closer look. I noticed that there were tiny tunnels in some of the brown spots, and one even had a minute, worm-like insect larvae. I also saw indistinct gouges in a few of the brown spots that looked a lot like tooth marks. Mystery solved! The squirrels were feeding on acorn weevils, often found inside acorns and much richer in calories than the acorns themselves.
and fungi have been popping up everywhere. I’ve been surprised to see how fond squirrels are of mushrooms. I’ve repeatedly come across mushrooms which had been plucked from where they had grown, carried to some other spot, and partly or almost completely eaten. Bite marks sometimes showed along the edges, and there were always discarded pieces scattered around–squirrels seem to be sloppy eaters. 
Slugs and snails also seem to love mushrooms, but they simply make broad, shallow gouges in the caps and the mushrooms remain standing where they grew.
and move into more sheltered lodgings, often in hollow trees. Instead of using leaves, they line their nests with fibrous material. The inner bark of this dead branch was stripped off by a squirrel and used to provide warm insulation for its nest. The smoothly denuded wood surfaces and hanging remnants are typical of squirrel work. 
In addition, there are usually a few gouges made by the animal’s incisors somewhere in the debarked area. Dead branches are the most common source of good nest lining material, but the bark of living honeysuckle and other shrubs is a favorite material where they are available.
I just spent a wonderful week in the western Adirondacks, and I was able to indulge in one of my favorite activities: exploring the Independence River on foot–in other words, wading. Besides being breathtakingly beautiful, the Independence is small enough to be safely waded when water levels are low, and there are plenty of sandbars and silty edges where tracks can be found. These bear tracks were the find of the day. 
The bear was traveling from left to right, and my dog (she likes to explore rivers with me) left tracks below the bear’s, going in the opposite direction. The first bear print at the upper left is the right front, and just to its right is the right rear. A little farther to the right is the left front print and to its left the left rear. The pattern of rear print ahead of front from the same side tells me that the bear was moving at an overstep walk–a gait often used for relaxed investigation or leisurely travel.
there are usually plenty of other indicators that bears are in the neighborhood. Bears use a variety of marking techniques to communicate with other bears, and these marks are often prominent and long-lasting. A bear raked this white pine tree with its claws, leaving fresh claw marks which oozed with copious sap flows.
On a different day during my recent visit to the ‘Daks I walked along a forest road where posts had been set to mark the locations of culverts. It was clear that bears were habitually using that road–many of the posts, like this one, were ravaged by bear bites. The brighter wood exposed by the bites stands out to our eyes, but for the bear the scent of the saliva-soaked wood is probably more important.
They often rub against trees or wooden structures leaving a personal scent signature from the oils and sebaceous chemicals in their fur. Another post along that same forest road was decorated with hairs left by a bear that had done just that.
This time of year in the Adirondacks black cherries are a favorite item, as demonstrated by this example. Elsewhere the skins and seeds of apples, grapes, viburnums and berries; squash and pumpkin seeds; corn kernels; or the shells of hickory nuts, beechnuts and acorns may show up in late summer scat. This is the season of ursine hyperphagia, the insatiable hunger that drives bears to eat almost 24 hours a day. The thick layers of fat they put on will allow them to survive their long winter hibernation.