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The Birds and Elves are in for the same reason they are in every other green deck, mana acceleration. They serve an additional purpose in this deck, however, as the more cheap tappers that you have once opposition is out, the better.

The counterspells provide early game control, and help keep you alive until you can get Opposition and Squirrel Wrangler. The Foils work marvelously in Bushy-Tailed Hell, because you can recycle the islands via Groundskeeper. Daze provides a little early game control, and is very frustrating for an unready opponent... and why play this deck at all if you don't want to really frustrate people?

Coat of Arms makes the hordes of squirrels humungous, and provides a good kill mechanism. Before I added this I sometimes attacked with too many squirrels and didn't have enough to keep my opponent locked up, so with the Coat of Arms in you can simply sit back and wait to draw one while tapping your opponent out every turn.

Squirrel Wrangler creates your army and with him out you'll never run out of blockers. Ever blocked a Shivan Wurm with 7 1/1 Squirrels? Lots of fun =)

Groundkeeper allows you to recycle lands after saccing them to Squirrel Wrangler, which can be very valuable. Perhaps more important though is his ability to fuel the card drawing engine of Trade Routes.

Trade Routes makes sure you draw into your combo, and with the lack of tutors in the May T2 environment this will make you faster and more efficient than most other decks.

Opposition is the core of this deck. With 12 1cc creatures and 4 squirrel producing druids you will always have more creatures than your opponent has lands and creatures combined. The turn you play this should almost always be game over.

Strategy

Your goal is to get out Squirrel Wrangler as fast as possible. Once he is out start your production at the end of your opponent's next turn if possible, and during yours if not. Try to have a foil ready when you cast him, because having him terminated really is a downer. Get Opposition out as soon as possible, and once you have it do not attack with anything until you have a Coat of Arms. You can afford to stall, and it usually is not worth taking the chance of the opponent having the mana necessary to cast that one crucial spell that will ruin your entire day. Remember, they only need 2 mana available to earthquake for 1, and while that is only a setback to this deck and not an automatic loss, it may be enough to cost you the game. If you find yourself missing any part of the combo, discard lands and use Trade Routes to grab it. Even if you don't have a Groundskeeper out, don't worry about losing lands, because you'll get him eventually and once you have him you will get all of your lands back soon enough.

I can't promise you incredible success with this deck, because truly I don't know how it will do in the competitive environment of professional magic. It does stand a chance however, and I do know that few things are as much fun as making your opponent say "I got killed by an army of 11/11 squirrels" Good luck playing, and check back for my next article on another new deck, Quake.