Day 17.088: Squirrel ranking

I remember many years ago seeing what I think was a trailer for a UK nature program. It involved a red squirrel seeing off one of its much larger grey squirrel cousins. The explanation was that because they store their foods in large larders, they have to be territorial and aggressive while grey squirrels scatter their food stores (and even they don't necessarily remember where they put it). As we've seen both the US red and gray squirrels recently, I was curious if I would see anything similar occur.

The other day, after I refilled the bird feeder and left a few seeds on the ground, I saw that it was being cleaned up by little red:

After a while, I saw a gray squirrel slowly and cautiously approaching from the side, and the red squirrel just turned its head to look at the new arrival as if to say, "Are we really doing this?" and the much larger gray squirrel just slowly turned and walked away.

Not so dramatic as the (presumably) BBC footage, but the same result. The grays got their moment with the leftovers, but only when red had moved on of its own accord.

No doubt who the king or queen of the castle is.