Animal Identification from "leavings"
There's a couple of small piles, about 3 inches across on my mom's back deck on the outskirts of Terre Haute, Indiana in the US. The pieces are firm but flexible as if they are plant matter, not sure if it's scat or discard.
My mom has a crab apple tree in the yard. The piece I picked up did have that leathery feel of dried apple.
The home is in the outskirts of Terre Haute, Indiana US. The area has deer, raccoons, possum, fox squirrels, rats, mice and chipmunks.
Her yard has several gardens of ornamental plants. She has a couple of bird feeders out as well. They are a few feet away from the back edge of the deck.
The piles are closer to the back door and away from the edges of the deck. There's no garbage outside at all, the bins are kept in the garage which faces the front of the house.
The deck itself is about one foot above the ground and is about twenty feet long alongside the house and about twelve feet across. One side is right up against the house.
She was curious about what animal may have left the piles. I was curious as to whether or not they are scat or just left over roughage.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/21101. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
Suggest you confirm by observation:
This is sort of what I would expect to see from a squirrel eating. Take a closer look and see if you can figure out if they are crap, or just cores and peels. I've seen squirrels create large mounds of conifer scales. They like to find a spot where they can watch the world while they munch.
Might also be a chipmunk.
The source fruit may also be mountain ash berries (big clusters of pea sized orange/red berries) or hawthorne (similar looking to crabapples.
Test: Put a bunch of crabapples, or whatever other stuff you think might be the starting product on your bird feeder, and see what comes.
That said: Indiana is a long way from Alberta.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/21698. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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