“Every year their larder runs empty by the third week of January. Where is a squirrel supposed to find food then?” — Why a 68-year-old Dales joiner may be the squirrel's last chance before the first frost.
Why a Mild Winter Leaves a Squirrel Hungry
Most people think squirrels hibernate. They don't. On the worst days they curl up in the drey and sleep it off. The rest of the time they're out, living off what they buried in autumn. Bury it in October, dig it up in January. That's the whole plan.
"And the plan," says Ann's husband Geoff, "was made for proper winters."
Ann has hand-reared orphaned squirrels for longer than either of them can remember exactly, and she has kept a notebook on the ones in her garden every morning since 1999. In the early notebooks, the squirrels slow right down by the last week of November. In the recent ones, they're still running about at full tilt well into December, on mild, damp days of eleven or twelve degrees.
"A squirrel that's running about is burning energy," Ann says. "So it starts digging up its stores in December instead of January. It's eating its winter in advance."
"Around the 21st of January, every year, give or take a few days. That's when they're on the bird table at seven in the morning, looking at me through the window like it's my fault."
That date is written in the margin of almost every recent notebook. The stores are used up, the trees have nothing left to give, and spring is still weeks away. For a small animal that has been burning energy all winter, an empty larder at that point can be life-threatening.
And that's why Ann and Geoff don't wait for January. "By the time you see them hungry at the bird table, you're late," she says. "Help them now. Every nut they get from you in October and November is one they don't have to dig up from their own store, so there's more left when the cold really comes. And a squirrel that has found a reliable spot in autumn knows exactly where to go when the larder is empty."
The Joiner Who Went Out to the Barn
Geoff didn't pay the notebooks much attention for twenty years. Then Ann showed him the January pages, and he went out to the barn.
The workshop is an old stone hay barn behind the house, on the edge of the Howgill Fells. It smells of sawdust and linseed oil. His grandfather's marking gauge sits on the windowsill, the brass worn pale where three generations of thumbs have pressed it. On the bench is a row of small gabled roofs, each waiting for its back board.
"Forty-six years I've done doors, windows, staircases," he says, tapping a little round stool home with the heel of his hand. "Half the kitchens in this valley. And what am I going to be remembered for? Squirrel pubs." He laughs. "Ann's very pleased about that."
"Wouldn't a Garden Full of Oaks and Hazels Be Better?"
Yes, and Geoff will be the first to say so.
"If you've got oaks, hazels, a beech or two and a bit of untidy corner, that's the best thing a squirrel could ask for. Plant a hazel this winter if you've the room. Nothing I make beats that."
"But most gardens aren't that. Most gardens are a lawn, a fence and a patio. And even a garden full of trees has a bad year: a year with no beech mast, a wet February. A feeder isn't instead of the trees. It's for the weeks when the trees have run out."
Four Things That Make a Squirrel Feeder Do More Harm Than Good
Before Geoff built anything, Ann sat him down with the feeders and food that people actually buy, and what she'd seen go wrong with them over the years.
- An open tray with no roof. The first wet week, the nuts sit in water. By the end of it they're mouldy, and mouldy nuts are the last thing a hungry squirrel should be eating.
- Gaps and corners you can't clean. Squirrels share feeders, and anything that can't be wiped out properly lets disease build up, including squirrelpox, which kills red squirrels.
- Salted, roasted "squirrel mix". Sold in bags with a squirrel on the front, full of salted peanuts and filler. "Like feeding a child crisps for dinner," says Ann.
- Food on the ground. It invites rats at night and gives a cat somewhere to wait. A squirrel eating on the ground has to keep one eye on the hedge the whole time.
The Nuts Bar: Why Every Piece Is Where It Is
Ann drew the first one on the back of an envelope. Geoff built it that weekend and fixed it to the fence outside the kitchen window. It's still there.
She called it the Nuts Bar after the village pub, and the joke stuck, because it works like one. Ann's rule was simple, and Geoff calls it the Sit-Down Principle: "A squirrel that feels safe sits down to eat. A nervous one grabs a nut and runs. If they're sitting down, you've got it right."
So every part of it is there to make a squirrel feel safe enough to sit down:
- Four little bar stools. Round wooden perches set at exactly the height where a squirrel can sit upright and reach straight into the tray, with no stretching, no balancing and no wrestling with lids. Yes, it also means they sit in a row like regulars at the bar. "That bit was for us," Geoff admits.
- A proper gabled roof. It keeps rain off the food, so nuts stay dry and don't go mouldy, and gives them a bit of cover overhead.
- A solid back board. Fixed flat to a fence, wall or tree, so nothing can come at them from behind. Their backs are covered, and they can see everything in front.
- A deep front tray. Open and easy to reach, deep enough that one morning top-up lasts, and smooth inside so it wipes clean in a minute.
- Ventilation slots under the food chamber. Air moves underneath, so any damp that does get in dries out instead of pooling under the nuts. "A roof keeps the rain off," says Geoff. "Air is what keeps them dry."
- No wire, no mesh. Nothing for claws or teeth to catch on.
- A stainless steel water bowl. In a dry spell or a hard frost, fresh water is as hard to find as food. Steel doesn't crack in the cold and rinses out in seconds.
- A corn cob spike. An occasional treat, and worth it just to watch one work a cob loose.
- Flame-treated , with "Nuts Bar" on the back board like a pub sign. Size: 37 × 17.5 × 32.8 cm (14.6 × 6.9 × 12.9 in) (W × D × H).
"Ten Days Against Four"
Ann, naturally, tested it. One wet October she put the same handful of hazelnuts in an open tray on the wall and in the Nuts Bar on the fence, and checked both every morning.
"The open tray had mould on it by day four. The Nuts Bar was still dry on day ten, and that was only because they'd eaten the lot by then. Roof on top, air underneath. That's all it is."
And from late summer through autumn it does a second job: the squirrels carry Ann's hazelnuts off the tray and bury them all over the garden. "You're helping them fill the larder," she says. "I've had hazel saplings come up in the veg patch from nuts they never went back for."
The Thing to Do First, and It Costs Nothing
Before anybody sends Geoff a penny, Ann would like a word.
- Put out a shallow dish of fresh water tonight. Change it daily, and break the ice on frosty mornings.
- Stop putting out bread. It fills them up and does nothing for them.
- Leave the leaves. A pile of leaves under a hedge or a few fallen branches gives squirrels, hedgehogs and insects somewhere to forage all winter.
"Do that, and you've already helped. If you want them sitting outside your window every morning, that's where Geoff comes in."
What to put on the tray
Best: hazelnuts in their shells ("the gold standard," says Ann, and gnawing the shell keeps their teeth in trim), walnuts, sunflower seeds and pine nuts. A slice of apple or carrot now and then. Never: salted or roasted nuts, bread, biscuits or leftovers. Peanuts and corn only as an occasional treat. Her golden rule: "Little and often. If there's food left at dusk, put out less tomorrow."
Lucky enough to have red squirrels? How to help them most
Sedbergh sits on the edge of one of England's last red squirrel strongholds, and Ann has a soft spot for them. "They're smaller and lighter than the greys, and fussier. Give them the good stuff."
- Hazelnuts in shells come first, followed by sunflower seeds, pine nuts and walnuts. Red squirrel groups recommend the same.
- Skip peanuts and maize as a main food. Reds need real nutrition to get through winter, not filler.
- Clean the tray and bowl every week with hot water and a mild pet-safe disinfectant, then let them dry. Squirrelpox, which greys carry without falling ill, is deadly to reds and spreads where squirrels share food.
- Put it near cover, close to trees or tall hedges, a couple of metres off the ground.
- See a grey at a red feeder? Clean the feeder straight away and report the sighting to your local red squirrel group. They track where greys are moving in.
"If you get a red in your garden, you're one of the lucky ones. Look after it."
What Gardeners Are Saying About the Nuts Bar
"Up on the apple tree on Saturday, first customer by Monday. This is Gerald. Second stool from the left, quarter past eight, every morning. He has opinions about sunflower seeds."
"It rains sideways here from October to April. Roof's soaked, nuts are bone dry. My old open feeder was a soggy mess by Tuesday."
"Put it up for Mum, who's 82. She rings me with squirrel news now. Watching one wrestle the corn cob off the spike is, in her words, better than the telly."
"I volunteer at a wildlife rescue. Roof, a tray you can actually clean, water, off the ground. That's exactly what we tell people to look for. Brush and gloves live on the nail next to it."
"Up since November, like the article said. Last week of January, first hard frost, and look at the tracks on the lawn. Two of them every single morning."
Questions Geoff Gets Asked in the Workshop
"Course there is. They get hungry in January the same as the reds. And most people who've got one of these tell me they spend more time watching the squirrels than they ever did watching the telly."
"Now. Autumn is when they're out finding food and working out where it comes from. Get it up by the end of November and they'll know exactly where to come in January. Put it up in February and you've missed the point."
"Not if you fix it up off the ground and follow Ann's rule: little and often, nothing left out overnight. It's food on the ground that brings rats."
"The odd jay or magpie will try. Put hazelnuts in their shells on the tray and they mostly give up. Squirrels don't."
"Brush the tray out, wipe it with hot water and a drop of pet-safe disinfectant once a week, rinse the bowl. Five minutes. There are no corners in it that you can't get a cloth into. I made sure of that."
The Last Batch Out of the Barn
Geoff is retiring at Christmas. Nobody is making him. "Forty-six years is enough. My knees agree, and so does Ann. I want to be stood at that kitchen window in the mornings myself for a change, not out here."
For years the Nuts Bars went to neighbours, Ann's friends from the rescue and half the Sedbergh allotment society. It was their daughter Kate who suggested selling them online, and who now runs the shop. "I thought we'd sell a few dozen," Geoff says. "Last year's batch was gone in under three weeks."
This year's is the last. Geoff cut the timber in the spring, knowing it would be. When we visited in September, there were 240 left on the barn shelves. They aren't sold in garden centres or on marketplaces, only through Kate's shop. When they're gone, the barn goes back to being a barn.
Order by 15 November to have it up while squirrels are still learning where the food is.
"It was Ann's idea. It was always Ann's idea."
"I'm not going to tell you a feeder changes the weather. It doesn't. But the winters have changed, and the squirrels haven't caught up. A dry tray, fresh water and a handful of hazelnuts in the third week of January makes a real difference to an animal that's had a hard few weeks.
And I'll tell you what I really want. I want somebody stood at their kitchen window on a frosty morning, cup of tea in hand, watching one sit down on that little stool, pick up a hazelnut and look straight back at them. That's worth more to me than anything on a price tag."