Perches–they’re important to wild creatures for many different reasons. The gray squirrel in the opening image (from yardandgarage.com) is using a perch as a feeding site. The next photo shows a Norway spruce whose dead lower branches provided feeding perches for a red squirrel. You can see how the piles of inedible cone cores and scales accumulated under the branches the squirrel perched on. These accumulations are called middens, and they can build up over time into substantial mounds.
Favorite perches often show signs of usage. The red squirrel that used the perch shown below left a cone scale and a number of opened seeds, some with wings still attached.
Red squirrels may mark perches by biting them. In the next photo you see a Norway spruce branch that bears the distinctive paired incisor marks made by a red squirrel. The lower branches of conifers are usually dead, so these marks don’t heal over and may last quite a while.
In the next photo you see a discovery I made during summer a few years ago. The Norway spruce cone crop that year was early and abundant, and a red squirrel had left a cone core, stripped of its supply of edible seeds, resting on the perch it had used. And in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t put it there, it was all the squirrel’s doing. The scales that dropped as the squirrel fed can be seen on the ground at the base of the tree.
The photo below shows an unusually well elevated feeding perch used by a gray squirrel.
In the next photo you see what I found on top of the log: the remains of an acorn the squirrel had fed on.
Here’s a perch used not for feeding but for food storage. A gray squirrel lodged a black walnut in the crotch of a honeysuckle branch. I’m not sure what the squirrel’s motivation was–perhaps it was to keep the walnut away from other squirrels.
A perch doesn’t need to be overly high to be suitable. In the next photo you see a log used by a squirrel–it could have been a red or a gray–feeding on a white pine cone.
Rocks can also make good perches. Last August a red squirrel harvested young larch cones and brought them to the rock shown below for consumption. Where rocks or logs are available they are preferred over ground level feeding sites.
But food isn’t the only thing drawing animals to perches. A red fox balanced on the log in the next photo in order to deposit its scat. Scat is important in intraspecies communication, and wild canines prefer to leave their scat in conspicuous positions. Sometimes this requires a little acrobatic ability to position the scat just right.
One of my favorite spring experiences is hearing the drumming of ruffed grouse. Males in search of mates perch on logs or other raised features and beat their wings to produce a resonant booming sound. They prefer platforms that are unobstructed and raised well off the ground. You can see a spot in the center of the image where the bark was dislodged by the drumming bird.
Perches can also be used as observation posts. In the next photo you see a mound of earth thrown up by a falling tree. There were tracks–they were barely visible so I didn’t include a photo–going up the side. The size of the impressions suggested a fox.
On top of the mound (shown in the next photo) there were obvious signs of disturbance, showing that it had been used as a perch. The fox would have sat quietly while it listened, looked, and sniffed for signs of prey animals.
We seem to have circled back around to the topic of food, so here’s my last example of a feeding perch. A black bear climbed the beech tree in the photo below and pulled a nut-bearing branch inwards until it broke off. The bear consumed the goodies, pushed the branch aside and pulled another one inward until it broke. The discarded branches formed a tangled cluster, and the bear might even have stood on the growing mass of harvested branches as it continued to pull more branches in. These branch clusters are known by the somewhat misleading term bear nests, although they have more in common with squirrel middens than with nests. With healthy beeches becoming less abundant, bear nests in beech trees are harder to find than they used to be, but the same kind of sign occurs in apple, black cherry, serviceberry, and oak trees.
Wild creatures know their territories in minute detail, and they’re familiar with all the best perches. The attributes of a perfect perch vary somewhat with the specific animal and situation, but safety and accessibility are always important. The location also needs to be appropriate to the animal’s purpose, whether it’s to consume food, to find food, or to advertise its presence. If we stay alert for perches we can begin to understand what makes a good perch and what they can tell us about the lives of the animals.