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The British Association for Shooting and Conservation

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Firearm & Shotgun Security January 2015 - BASC and National Crime Agency collaborate to provide firearms security advice The advice, Protect Your Firearm, Protect Your Sport, shares tips with certificate holders on storage and transportation and on keeping vigilant when out and about. It also shows the steps that can be taken

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Grey squirrel control - The British Association for Shooting and Conservation

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Grey Squirrel Control Since their introduction into Britain in the 1870s, grey squirrels have spread rapidly. They have displaced the red squirrel throughout most of England and Wales and in south-east and central Scotland. Grey squirrels can cause serious problems for foresters, native wildlife and gamekeepers. The bark stripping from [...]

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After learning last week that government ministers had expressed support for a cull of grey squirrels, PETA has come together with Animal Aid and other animal-protection groups to speak out against this cruel proposal in a joint letter to Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

While some ministers are blaming grey squirrels for damaging trees, any harm caused by these animals is limited and localised. Meanwhile, it’s humans who are responsible for encroaching on and destroying massive expanses of woodland – habitats that otherwise could have provided more than enough space for all species to thrive. It’s unfair to scapegoat and kill grey squirrels, who are simply trying to survive.

Another common excuse for culling grey squirrels is that they’re a threat to red squirrels, but this is also unjustifiable both scientifically and ethically. Culling may actually lead to an increase in grey-squirrel populations because recolonisation occurs rapidly when food and habitat are easily available. Furthermore, anyone who cares about one type of squirrel should extend that compassion to all squirrels – who feel pain, enjoy raising families, and want to live – regardless of their colour.

Squirrel-killing methods are extremely cruel and include poisoning, trapping, shooting, and, in the case of young animals, stamping. Poisoned animals die slowly and painfully, and the chemicals used can harm animals other than the intended targets. Similarly, traps may not kill instantly and don’t discriminate between a grey squirrel, a red squirrel, a cat, a human child, or any other animal. Shot animals are frequently only wounded and crawl off to die a slow, agonising death.

What You Can Do

If you’d like to get involved in PETA’s campaigns to help wildlife and other animals, please join our Action Team today. We’ll contact you about upcoming events and demonstrations in your area, urgent action alerts, and breaking news.

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Culling Grey Squirrels Is Unjustifiable – Both Scientifically and Ethically

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PETA has teamed up with Animal Aid to send a joint letter to Michael Gove condemning plans for a cruel grey-squirrel cull.

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How to make a big hat from palm leaves (part 1) - Hand Creating

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These squirrels have grey fur and often sit upright with their large bushy tails arched over their backs.

Grey squirrels, originally from North America, were released in the UK by 19th century landowners. They are now very common and widespread.

Grey squirrels are active during the day, foraging for food in trees and on the ground - they often visit peanut feeders in gardens. In the autumn they spend time storing nuts to eat during the winter.

Their nest, called a drey, is a compact, spherical structure. It is slightly larger than a football and constructed of twigs, leaves, bark and grass.

Grey squirrels tend to breed in between January and April and, if food is plentiful, they may have a second litter in the summer.

They are extremely successful and have replaced our native red squirrels over most of the UK.

What they eat:

Grey squirrels eat acorns, bulbs, tree shoots, buds, fungi, nuts and roots. Occasionally squirrels will take birds' eggs and chicks.

Measurements:

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Grey Squirrels | How do Squirrels Nest & Other Squirrel Facts - The RSPB

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These squirrels have grey fur and often sit upright with their large bushy tails arched over their backs. Grey squirrels, originally from North America, were released in the UK by 19th century landowners. They are now very common and widespread.

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Man feeding squirrels at St. James's Park, London

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Eurasian red squirrels are one the UK's native mammals © VOJTa Herout / Shutterstock

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The UK is home to two squirrel species: the Eurasian red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) and the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis).

The species you are more likely to see scampering through the trees or ransacking your bird feeders will depend on your location, though grey squirrels, which are not native to the UK, are now far more common in most areas.

Discover what these seemingly adorable tree-dwelling rodents get up to - what they eat, where they sleep and why they keep digging holes in your garden.

What do squirrels eat?

Squirrels are omnivores. Most of the time they rely on plants, but their diet varies through the year depending on what is available each season.

Both species eat tree seeds. Grey squirrels predominantly seek out high-calorie seeds such as acorns, beech nuts, hazelnuts, sweet chestnuts and walnuts. Red squirrels eat these seeds too, but they will also feast on smaller seeds from conifer cones.

Squirrels will also dine on flowers, fungi, shoots and some plant bulbs, as well as sometimes turning to insects, such as caterpillars, bird eggs and even nestlings.

They are opportunistic feeders. So, if you provide food for birds in your garden, you may also see these supplies diminished by squirrels taking advantage of an easy meal.

Squirrels are opportunists and will happily feast on food you leave out in your garden, even if it wasn't intended for them © Tim Felce (Airwolfhound) via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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Why do squirrels bury food?

Winter is tough for squirrels, with fresh food in short supply. To get themselves through the lean times, they hoard food, storing it underground in shallow holes. Red squirrels are also know to cache fungi in tree crevices. They will return to these supplies throughout the cold months.

Squirrels don't use a single central larder. Instead, they hide their foraged food across a wide area. It's thought this reduces the impact of cache pilferage on the forager's winter supplies. This is where another squirrel takes food it didn't collect itself. While they will inevitably still lose some food in this way, they might also reciprocate by taking food that other squirrels have collected.

Squirrels dig small holes in the ground that they will usually bury food in. These stores help them survive winter food shortages. © Shredda via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

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Grey squirrels have been known to use deceptive tactics to protect their supplies. When other squirrels are around, they will dig and cover some cache sites without actually burying any food in them. It's thought that, while they rely on their noses to find food when they need it, squirrels also use visual cues. Deceptive caching may serve as a distraction, preventing carefully foraged food from being stolen immediately by other opportunistic squirrels.

When winter's fresh food shortages arrive, squirrels will locate and use up most of their stored supplies, but they won't find them all again. This inadvertently benefits the next generation of squirrels, as these buried seeds stand a chance of growing into new trees that produce new sources of food.

Where do squirrels live?

The Wildlife Trusts estimate there to be around 140,000 red squirrels and a whopping 2.5 million grey squirrels living in the UK.

Eurasian red squirrels

Red squirrel numbers have dramatically declined since the introduction of grey squirrels and are now considered endangered in the UK. Their strongholds are in Scotland, home to an estimated 75% of the remaining red squirrel population, but they once spread across much of the UK.

They have disappeared from all but a few places in England, Ireland and Wales. In England they can be seen on the Isle of Wight and Brownsea Island, as well as Formby, and in pine forests in Northumberland and the Lake District. In Wales they are mostly restricted to Anglesey in the northwest.

Red squirrels can be found in coniferous and broadleaf woodland. However, the loss and fragmentation of these habitats puts them at risk of further decline.

Additionally, expanding conifer plantations in the UK, usually made up of non-native tree species, sound like they might be beneficial to coniferous forest-dwelling red squirrels. But in reality, these areas provide a lack of prey diversity for animals such as pine martens, which turn to hunting red squirrels to survive instead.

Efforts are underway in the UK to try and save this squirrel species. Monitoring changes in the population is an important part of this and conservationists have seen some success with moving some red squirrels from stable populations into specially chosen areas that the species used to be found in.

Outside of the UK, red squirrels are common across continental Europe and Asia. In some places they can be found thriving in urban areas, especially where grey squirrels haven't been introduced.

Conservationists have been monitoring red squirrels in the UK and looking for ways to prevent this endangered species from being lost © Frank Vassen via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

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Grey squirrels

You are much more likely to come across grey squirrels - also known as eastern gray squirrels - in England, Wales and much of Northern Ireland.

Grey squirrels are quite at home in woodlands but are also a common sight in many urban gardens and parks. This species is from North America and was introduced to the UK, possibly as early as the 1870s.

They directly compete with red squirrels. Grey squirrels take a larger share of available food, steal from red squirrels' food caches and have displaced the native squirrel population in the UK and parts of Europe. They can carry disease such as the squirrelpox virus, which greys are resistant to but can infect and kill red squirrels.

In the UK, grey squirrels also have few predators that could control their expanding population, though pine martens, foxes and birds of prey such as goshawks may hunt them.

Where do squirrels nest?

Grey and red squirrels are arboreal, meaning that they live primarily in trees and build their nests there too.

A squirrel nest is known as a drey. These are messy-looking balls of sticks, about the size of a football, and are lined with moss, leaves, grass, shredded bark and other soft material the squirrel can find. You'll spot them at least six metres off the ground, built into tree forks. They're often more visible in winter when the trees lose their leaves.

It isn't possible to tell whether a drey belongs to a grey or red squirrel until you spot which species is its resident, though where you are in the UK may provide some clues.

Dreys can be confused with the nests of large birds like magpies. If you look closely, you can sometimes tell the difference between these as squirrels will weave their nests with twigs that still have their leaves attached, whereas birds tend to use leafless sticks.

Squirrels may also take advantage of natural tree hollows or large nest boxes for dens. The squirrel will tend to line these with the same kinds of soft materials that they would use in a drey.

Squirrel nests, known as dreys, look like messy balls of sticks © RobDun / Shutterstock

Do squirrels hibernate?

Squirrels don't hibernate. Both red and grey squirrels are active during the day, all year round.

Animals that hibernate, such as hedgehogs and dormice, have to build up fat reserves to survive through winter. Squirrels don't do this and instead rely on a steady supply of food from their underground stores.

While they still need to get out and about for food, you may see squirrels less often in winter than when it is warmer. When the temperature drops, squirrels may spend several days in their drey, keeping themselves warm and dry.

Apart from during the breeding season, squirrels tend to nest alone. However, in winter, multiple squirrels may share a nest to help them keep warm.

When do squirrels have babies?

Red and grey squirrels start breeding when they are 10-12 months old. They usually have two litters of two to four offspring each year. The first litter is born in early spring and the second in early summer.

Baby squirrels, known as kits or kittens, are born blind and hairless. They start to eat solid food at about eight weeks but may rely on their mother for up to 10 weeks.

In the breeding season, males are attracted to females when they are in heat (oestrus). Multiple males may chase the female until a dominant male is established. Both sexes are not monogamous, and will mate with multiple partners.

Why do squirrels shake their tails?

Being almost equal in length to their body, it's impossible to not notice a squirrel's large, fluffy tail. They're even named for it. The word 'squirrel', which has Greek origins, means 'shade tail'.

A squirrel's tail helps them with balance but can also be used for communication. You may have occasionally spotted a squirrel giving its tail a few sharp flicks. This could be a signal of aggression or agitation directed at other squirrels, sometimes accompanied by vocalisations. Or it could show a predator that's it's been spotted and that they've lost the element of surprise.

A study of North American fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), which are close relatives of our grey squirrels, suggests that larger tail flags could also indicate frustration. In yellow ground squirrels (Spermophilus fulvus), which are more distantly related, tail twitches may signal excitement or anxiety.

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Squirrels in the UK: what they are up to, when and why

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Discover what red and grey squirrels eat, where they sleep and why they keep digging holes in your garden.

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Humans acknowledge that personality goes a long way, at least for our species. But scientists have been more hesitant to ascribe personality - defined as consistent behavior over time - to other animals.

A study from the University of California, Davis, is the first to document personality in golden-mantled ground squirrels, which are common across the western U.S. and parts of Canada. The study, published in the journal Animal Behaviour, found the squirrels show personality for four main traits: boldness, aggressiveness, activity level and sociability.

While the golden-mantled ground squirrel is under no conservation threat, the findings suggest that understanding how an animal's personality influences use of space is important for wildlife conservation.

To see them chitter and skitter, stop and then scurry, the fact that ground squirrels have personalities may not seem surprising. But the scientific field of animal personality is relatively young, as is the recognition that there are ecological consequences of animal personality. For instance, bolder, more aggressive squirrels may find more food or defend a larger territory, but their risky behavior may also make them vulnerable to predation or accidents.

"This adds to the small but growing number of studies showing that individuals matter," said lead author Jaclyn Aliperti, who conducted the study while earning her Ph.D. in ecology at UC Davis. "Accounting for personality in wildlife management may be especially important when predicting wildlife responses to new conditions, such as changes or destruction of habitat due to human activity."

Scientists have been studying golden-mantled ground squirrels at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, for decades. It was established as a long-term study site more than 30 years ago by Aliperti's advisor, Dirk Van Vuren, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology.

Aliperti drew from this powerful data set for her study, while also initiating a series of experiments there over the course of three summers to observe and quantify the squirrels' personalities.

She notes that while there are no Meyers-Briggs tests for animals, there are standardized approaches to quantifying animal personalities. She observed and recorded squirrel responses to four tests:

Novel environment: Squirrels were placed in an enclosed box with gridded lines and holes.

Mirror: Squirrels are presented with their mirror image, which they do not recognize as their own.

Flight initiative: Squirrels were approached slowly in the wild to see how long they wait before running away.

Behavior-in-trap: Squirrels were caught, unharmed, in a simple trap and their behavior briefly observed.

Overall, the study found that bolder squirrels had larger core areas where they concentrated their activity. Bold, active squirrels moved faster. Also, squirrels that were bolder, more aggressive and more active had greater access to perches, such as rocks. Perch access is important because it can provide a better vantage point for seeing and evading predators. Interestingly, perch access was also associated with sociability.

Golden-mantled ground squirrels are considered an asocial species. They are relatively small, giving them little opportunity to form the tighter social bonds common in larger ground squirrels, which typically spend more time in family units while reaching maturity. However, the study said that "within this asocial species, individuals that tend to be relatively more social seem to have an advantage."

In such cases, being more social could save an individual's life. Such personality differences can influence a squirrel's ability to survive and reproduce, which could scale up to the population or community level.

UC Davis is home to many squirrels, which have become an honorary mascot of sorts on campus.

"The squirrels of UC Davis are something else," said Aliperti.

She means it literally. They are tree squirrels and very different from the ground squirrels Aliperti studied. Yet she says her work has changed how she views the squirrels of Davis.

"I view them more as individuals," Aliperti said. "I view them as, 'Who are you? Where are you going? What are up to?' versus on a species level."

Noticing such individuality brings a more personal angle to viewing wildlife.

"Animal personality is a hard science, but if it makes you relate to animals more, maybe people will be more interested in conserving them," said Aliperti.

In addition to Aliperti and Van Vuren, the study's co-authors include Brittany Davis, Nann Fangue and Anne Todgham of UC Davis.

The study was funded through the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory Graduate Fellowship; Dr. Lee R. G. Snyder Memorial Fellowship; American Society of Mammalogists Grant-in-Aid of Research; and the UC Davis Walter and Elizabeth Howard Award, and Ecology Student Endowment Award.

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Humans acknowledge that personality goes a long way, at least for our species. But scientists have been more hesitant to ascribe personality - defined as consistent behavior over time - to other animals. A study from the University of California, Davis, is the first to document personality in golden-mantled ground squirrels, which are common across the western U.S.