Squirrels at Breithaupt Park
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Our October outing took place at Breithaupt Park in Kitchener. We learned about red squirrels and grey squirrels. Grey squirrels can be either grey or black in colour. Both grey and red squirrels gather food to hide to eat in the winter, but grey squirrels hide their food in many different places while red squirrels hide their food all in one place. This might be why red squirrels are more aggressive in defending their food hiding spot. If something finds the red squirrels food hiding spot, they could eat all the squirrel’s food, and the squirrel would have none for the wintertime.
We also played a game in which we were either a grey squirrel, or a red squirrel and we had to find and hide food. Then, we could steal each other’s food just like real squirrels do.
When a fox was added to the game, it became even more challenging to gather food and store it while trying to not get eaten by the fox. There were a lot of tired squirrels by the time the game ended!
Finally, we divided into two groups and went walking in different directions to tally up how many squirrels we could find. One group noticed many squirrels across a field and headed there. It became obvious why so many squirrels were there – oak trees with many acorns!!
In total the two groups observed 80 squirrels!
It is fun to learn more about an animal that we see so often in our daily lives.
Reported by: Rachelle