Edgartown resident Polly Bassett caught them red-handed.  Two squirrels, not surprisingly, found her feeder and were feasting without a care in the world. Polly immediately noticed a stark difference between the two foragers and snapped a photo to share on a social media site focused on wildlife. 

One was the large, typical gray squirrel of the type that that frequent bird feeders, traverse trees and otherwise scurry about Island habitats. The second squirrel was much smaller and red, which Polly identified as an American red squirrel. 

The significance of that documentation was immediately acknowledged online, since Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are the only parts of the state that lack this Commonwealth-common rodent. Though there has been past evidence of this species in midden piles found on the Island, no sightings of the live animal have been confirmed until now. Props to Polly.

The obvious question is, how did this missing mammal find its way to our shores? The likely answer is that it was a hitchhiker, possibly on landscaping materials, hidden in a pallet, or in a vehicle that came from the mainland. This wouldn’t be the first time that a red squirrel appeared on one of the Islands. Nantucket, also bereft of red squirrels, reported one in 2012. 

A single red squirrel will not a population make, though folks should be on the lookout for more. Anything is possible if you look to the history of grey squirrels on Nantucket. It wasn’t until 40 or so years ago that they arrived, likely the same way as our recent red squirrel washashore. Our sister island now boasts a population of the grey variety. No other reds have been documented on the other island since the 2012 individual. 

Red squirrels, scientifically known as tamiasciurus hudsonicus, is a rodent of many aliases. That two-part genus nomenclature — tamia and sciurus — translates into “an animal that caches food and has a shadow tail,” respectively. The latter part of the name comes from the Hudson Bay in Canada, where the animal was documented early on.   

Known to collect and pile its foodstuff, a red squirrel cache can be as large as 18 feet in length and three feet deep. The practice of collecting food and caching it in one place is called larder hoarding. Contrast that to the scatter-hoarding practice of grey squirrels that hide one nut or seed at a time in many different locations. One would expect that the red squirrels wouldn’t have the same problem of finding their cache as grey squirrels do. 

Both types of squirrels are considered granivores, or seed eaters. While grey squirrels prefer acorns, red ones enjoy the seeds of conifer trees. Red squirrels will also consume other nuts, berries, bark, insects, worms, and even mushrooms. They have no problems munching on mushrooms that are poisonous to humans and have been known to nosh on toxic-to-us amanitas.  

Other names for this small squirrel include pine or piney squirrel, chickaree, rusty or spruce squirrel and, my favorite from West Virginia, fairy diddle. Another, chatterbox, refers to the many sounds this squirrel makes, including alarm chirps, territorial rattles and screeches, aggressive growls and amorous buzzes. 

While some could consider the little red variety cute, 19th-century American naturalist John Burroughs would disagree. He called them “less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields.”   

While we don’t know if this will be a one-off, the sighting has the potential to be either just a red herring or the start of a full-blown red scare. 

Either way, I’d ask you to take a closer look at the squirrels you see. If it is small and has a reddish tint, you may be witnessing the expansion of the species and the start of a grey versus red rodent rivalry.

Suzan Bellincampi is Islands director for Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown and the Nantucket Wildlife Sanctuaries. She is also the author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.