Squirrels away with the birds

I SAW a squirrel the other day. It ran across the road in front of my car. It was quite a narrow road with Scots pine trees on either side and it was a red squirrel.

On the face of it this isn’t a very dramatic thing to report. But it is actually an example of one of the most interesting developments in European mammal ecology for decades.

In Ireland, Britain and Italy, red squirrel numbers declined for nearly a century while populations of the larger North American grey squirrel increased and spread. Exactly how the grey squirrels ousted the reds is debated by biologists but there is no question that it did occur practically everywhere they came into contact. There were fears that the red squirrel might even become extinct.