Red Squirrels Missing Tufts

I am still confused about red squirrel's ear tufts. The ones we saw in September did not have ear tufts.

Then I saw this clearly male squirrels with ear tufts.

Then the others' ear tufts were shedding?

According to the internet, ear tufts are a Winter thing, do maybe in September it wasn't quite cold enough, and in June it wasn't quite warm enough? Confused.