• Seeds of Sitka spruce are small, averaging 210,000 per pound. Seeds ripen in southeast Alaska during late August or early September, and dispersal usually begins in October.
• The seeds of Sitka spruce are a favorite food of red squirrels.
• This video shows a red squirrel extracting and eating the tiny seeds from a Sitka spruce cone.
• Each seed has an outer covering that the squirrel removes before eating the seed.
• This squirrel puts the seed with its covering on top of the cone it is holding (actually it is the bottom of the cone)
• It then extracts the seed from its covering before eating it.
• Usually a squirrel can extract and eat all the seeds from a spruce cone in around 3.5 minutes. This one took a little longer because it wanted to show us its technique.
• Why do red squirrels go to all this trouble to extract and eat these tiny seeds?
• Specific caloric value of spruce seed kernels averages about 27 kJ/g dry weight so I suspect eating a large number of these seeds provides them with sufficient calories.
• To see what a Sitka spruce seed looks like up close and its size go to photos and in the search box type spruce seeds.

Red Squirrel eating seeds from a spruce cone from Bob Armstrong on Vimeo.