Mystery of the Disappearing Suet

We noticed that the cake of suet in the suet feeder on our bird feeder pole was disappearing at a rapid clip, but thought it was due to the combined efforts of the California Thrasher and the Scrub Jay that often visit the feeder.  The crows seem to have given up on it since we stopped putting a pillar with seeds, nuts and bugs embedded in it, but we know the Thrasher in particular likes the suet.  

But this morning I looked out and saw another prime suspect at work on the suet.  Yep, it's a squirrel.  

Caught In The Act!

This one doesn't seem to be the usual California Ground Squirrel; this one looks more like a tree squirrel of some sort, with a bigger, fluffier tail than the Ground Squirrels have.  

You Lookin' At Me?

And, not satisfied with plundering the suet block, the furry acrobat moved on to investigate the seed feeder and the Nyger seed, too.  We had fun watching him getting to the goodies.

Squirrel Acrobatics

So how did the squirrel get past the baffle?  Easy--the Grevillea next to the feeder pole has grown to the size that any self-respecting tree squirrel can easily use as a stairway to paradise, or at least as a launching pad to get to the goodies.  

Overgrown Grevillea

I'm guessing there may be some pruning in the future of that shrub.  

Pollinator Partnership

Cindy found a great website, Pollinator Partnership, that promotes protection of pollinators through education and conservation.  There's a lot of good information on the website.

I've always thought of bees as pollinators, but hadn't given much thought to others such as butterflies, birds, bats, moths, ants, flies, beetles, wasps, small mammals and wind as pollinators.  That's quite a list.  One problem we've had is that some of the pollinators in our yard, such as the Scrub Jays, like to eat other pollinators, such as the Monarch butterfly larvae.  We keep hoping that the resident Red Shoulder Hawk will take out the ground squirrels, but so far the squirrels are just getting fatter and fatter on the bird seek we put out for the other birds.

The Pollinator Partnership website also has a handy pollinator friendly planting guide for each specific ecoregion.  Our ecoregion is the California Coastal Chaparral and we certainly have plenty of chaparral out in our canyon.  I noticed that various forms of Asclepia appear on their list for our region.  The Monarch butterflies will be happy about that.

Monarch Chrysalis

Cindy has planted the Asclepia plants we bought.  We decided to put them in the front yard to keep them away from the bird feeders in the back yard (Duh). The plants are recovering nicely from the havoc wrecked by the caterpillars a few weeks ago; they had stripped each plant down to the stems.  Most of the plants are starting to leaf out again and we're hoping they will have recovered by the time our three Monarch chrysalises hatch out and the new butterflies start laying eggs again.  There's been no change in the chrysalises, although I check them every day.  I continue to be amazed at how beautiful each chrysalis is; they look like jewels hanging from the fence and Bougainvillea branches.