Blame it on our island mentality, but this country seems always to have had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with foreigners. It is probably no surprise then to learn that for a sizeable number of people in this country there is a long-standing campaign to get rid of some unwelcome Americans. Not that this should risk our “special relationship”, I am just talking about squirrels. To be precise the Grey Squirrel, an animal that has become almost as ubiquitous a feature in this country as blue jeans and rock & roll, but one that divides opinion almost as much as that other American import, tobacco.
They have become such a common part of our experience of wildlife that it is easy to forget that they have only been with us for just over 100 years. The first recorded introduction was in Macclesfield in 1876, which, as far as I am aware, may be Macclesfield’s only claim to fame (note to self, may need to put a slightly different spin on that if I ever write for the Lancashire Telegraph). In the following decades around another 30 introductions took place across far-flung parts of England and even as far north as Edinburgh.
These American pioneers spread across much of the country almost as rapidly as us Europeans colonised America, though for some reason they seem to have dragged their heels a bit in the north east. Here the two centres for this transatlantic experiment were Middlesbrough and Darlington, both roughly around the time of the first world-war. (You’d have thought that there might have been more pressing matters to attend to back then). From those epicentres, their spread seems to have been relatively slow. In Hartlepool the sighting of a grey in a new area was worth a mention in the newsletter of the local natural history society as recently as twenty years ago and it is only in the past fifteen years that they have breached the River Tyne and invaded Northumberland. Actually Northumberland is being invaded in a pincer movement as the greys that were introduced in to Edinburgh all those decades ago have spread south, becoming latter day border reivers in English woodlands.
Grey squirrels seem to divide opinion like no other animal that I can think of. To some these accomplished robbers of bird tables and excavators of bulbs are no more than “tree rats”. Without question they are the main cause of the disappearance of our native Red Squirrel and their destructive habits, particularly that of gnawing the bark off trees, causes an estimated £14 million worth of damage each year.
On the other hand their looks and antics are undeniably cute, their approachable nature is endearing and their agility and ingenuity in raiding bird feeders is legendary. Not only that but they are the only mammal that the vast majority of people have a chance of seeing on a regular basis.
It’s no accident that Grey Squirrels have become so widespread; their success in this country is almost pre-ordained. Having evolved in the eastern North America in open forests of nut-bearing trees, the average British park is practically designed for them. Although we think of squirrels as quintessentially tree dwellers, Greys actually spend most of their foraging time on the ground. During their active spells, trees largely seem to be just somewhere to dash up and declare “kings” at us if we get to close. This diminished reliance on trees has helped Greys disperse across the countryside. They have been seen on the top of mountains and moors and rivers aren’t that much of a problem for them to cross, even without using their tails as sails.
Our winters are no problem for them either but, contrary to what is sometimes supposed, they don’t hibernate. Rather they just spend a lot more time in their dreys, emerging only in short bursts of activity, and who can blame them when you consider that a squirrel’s drey is so well insulated with leaves and moss that it can be up to 20 degrees warmer than the freezing temperatures outside. Winter can actually be a time of plenty for a squirrel. Famous for burying nuts to fall back on when food is in short supply, they use the classic strategy of not putting all their nuts in one basket, instead scattering them in little batches throughout their home range. Squirrels do have an excellent spatial memory for the general location of where they have buried their nuts but they home in on them using smell and it has been claimed that they can smell a nut 12 inches underground. It is their ability to process nuts that have given Greys another competitive advantage over Reds. Greys can digest acorns when they are still green but Reds, which have evolved to deal with small conifer seeds, have to wait until the acorns are ripe.
All in all, Greys are actually much more suited to the current British landscape than our native Reds and the sad fact is that if we didn’t have Greys then most of us would never see a squirrel. So what is the solution to the Greys among us? Some years ago, conservative peer, Lord Inglewood, suggested that Jamie Oliver should encourage school children to eat them in order to save the Reds. While I would love to see the adverts for that (one of your five vermin a day) he would have to get it onto nearly every primary school menu in the country, as there are an estimated 2 million Greys in England. I suppose that if we really wanted to, we could get rid of them; after all we’ve exterminated a few other species over the centuries, but the cost of doing that just on the island of Anglesey was almost half a million pounds. Repeating that across the UK is estimated at almost a billion pounds. But then, if we did get rid of them, what would we take the grand children to the park to see? Perhaps we just have to accept that in the modern world most international relationships are best viewed as shades of grey.
Raven on the Wing 