What is ripping bark off my maple?

[Fordian]

My 10 year old maple is having strips of bark torn off it, lowest is 6’ off the ground. Suburban garden, not a chance of deer, cows, goats etc. The garden birds tend towards sparrow, not parrot! You can see in the pictures, three different strips torn off at various heights, the next detritus on the ground, the last one for scale, where you can see its full thickness, not like the ‘paper-stripping’ small birds do to silver birch for nesting material.

What on earth is potentially destroying my tree? The bottom most rips happened in the last 24 hours.

Help!

Squirrels? Happens in a friend's garden, it's squirrels there.

Yeah I think grey squirrels do a lot of bark ripping if they don’t have other food. You could leave something else out for them?

I think it is squirrels, now, to my surprise! I went out earlier and heard a thump and scrabble on the wooden fence 2’ away from the trunk.

Do I strongly discourage, or feed the squirrel separately?

You could rub some chilli on the bark to discourage them, I think that's supposed to work but they are feisty things. You could leave some nuts out so they'll eat those instead. Any old nuts from the back of the cupboard will do - walnut, hazel, peanut, brazil etc.