I'm right now in my warm office up on the north side of Cincinnati. That's where I spend 2-3 months of winter. The place at the farm just isn't big enough for me, and I get to feeling cooped up. When I'm at the farm, we're normally crawling with squirrels. Up here, we're also up to our eyeballs with tree rats.
Squirrels generally don't go anywhere as long as there is food. From the back patio, I can see a dozen dreys. When the numbers decrease, it is usually from lack of food, and since the oaks go in approximately 10-year cycles, so do the squirrels. When I went out to sit this morning I had a gazillion squirrels moving about.
Squirrels do migrate when there are too many of them and they outstrip the local food source. #2 son, Moose, is the squirrel expert. He explained a phenomenon I was seeing a couple of years ago when the acorn crop failed. Squirrels get suicidal. They start roaming out in the middle of the street. They're not trying to kill themselves, but they start doing risky behaviors. One is searching for food in dangerous places and the other is migrating into unknown territory.
Generally speaking, the seasonal thing has to do with cover. Spring Squirrel season at the farm is usually a bust. Moose, being the expert, is the only one that seems to be able to get a shot at them. They hide up in the foliage and they're very hard to pick out. It is hard to shoot them until the leaves start to fall. Now, with all the leaves down, they are easier to see. They were there in June and September, you just couldn't see them. Now, all the food that's left is down on the ground. Moose like to hunt until the last day of season in February.
We have no AG in the area around the farm. It's all cow pastures or fallow land. If you have standing crops around, there are plenty of squirrels. The other thing is cover. Moose prefers to hunt hardwood stands with adjoining cedar thickets. The squirrels like to hid in the cedars and then come out onto the hardwood branches to feed.
