Footprints in the snow

The snow has almost gone, hereabouts.

One of the delights of a fresh snowfall is the sudden appearance of animal tracks, that reveal just how much activity is going on in a seemingly empty winter landscape. Here are a few from earlier this week.

A field mouse, hopping from top to bottom of the picture - you can see the line where it dragged its long tail in the snow.

A grey squirrel, with those prominent claws used for climbing

A moorhen, with that little sideways-facing spur at the back of its foot

A grey partridge. The line between the footprints is where the claw on the long central toe has dragged through the deep snow

A pheasant - similar to a partridge but larger, with a longer stride

A domestic goose - big webbed feet

Mallard duck, webbed-feet turned inwards as it waddled

The ubiquitous rabbit. Fore-feet are placed one in front of the other when they lands, then longer, larger back feet overtake them before they land.

The Price of Success

I photographed this grey squirrel on Wimbledon Common on Sunday, where it was scavenging picnic leftovers and delighting young children with its antics.

People have strong opinions about grey squirrels. There are some, who refer to them as grey ‘tree rats’, who would like to see them exterminated in Britain ……………… but back at the end of the nineteenth century there were plenty of landowners who had the same attitude towards native red ‘tree rats’. In 1903 the Highland Squirrel Club was formed  and over the next 30 years killed 85,000 red squirrels in an attempt to protect their forests from what was then seen as a pest. Earlier still, in the 1830s, 20,000 red sqirrels were sold annually by butchers in Leadenhall and Newgate markets in London, anticipating today's growing trade in grey squirrel meat.

I guess there’s a lesson in there somewhere – that it doesn’t pay any wildlife in Britain – native or introduced – to be too successful. Himalayan balsam, Canada geese, ring-necked parakeets, ruddy ducks, sparrowhawks, ivy, foxes, magpies and even peregrine falcons, red kites and sea eagles – to name but a few – have all become the focus of wildlife zealots because they are just too successful. I can see the sense in defending remaining strongholds of red squirrels against their grey counterparts, but elsewhere it seems pointless to expend resources on killing them at the same time as our affluent, effluent society provides them with virtually unlimited food resources in our garbage.

Maybe the lesson for grey squirrels is to adopt a lower profile - as this one seemed to be doing......

Inedible Strawberries

If you're looking for a native evergreen shrub for a wildlife garden that delivers a splash of colour in mid-winter, just when we need it most, then look no further than the strawberry tree Arbutus unedo. Strictly speaking it's only native to a few counties in the south and west of Ireland but, given a bit of shelter, it can be grown in gardens throughout most of Britain as a small tree or informal evergreen flowering hedge.

The great merit of this plant is that it flowers and fruits simultaneously. The clusters of waxy bells in bloom now presumably self-pollinate, since there are few insects about to do the job, then the fruits take a whole year to develop, swelling into bright red spheres around Christmas time. Apparently the fruits are fairly unpleasant to eat (supposedly, unedo is a corruption of Pliny the Elder's description of his experience of eating the fruit - unum edo, meaning 'I eat one'), although I've never plucked up the courage to perform my own taste-test. Interestingly, it seems that grey squirrels don't much like them either. This afternoon I watched them eating yew seeds (which are poisonous to most mammals, including us) and discarding the red pulp around the seeds (which isn't poisonous) but none of them touched the tempting-looking scarlet crop on the strawberry trees next to the yews. They all scampered off from the yews when I arrived so I guess they might be lying dead now from yew poisoning, but I doubt it; grey squirrel digestive systems seem to be able to cope with just about anything, except perhaps the fruit of the strawberry tree... but I'll keep a watch on them, just in case they turn to eating these too when the going gets tougher later in the winter.