Red squirrel in the Eden valley

Last week, when I was watching this delightful red squirrel feeding in a sycamore on the banks of the river Eden near Kirkby Stephen in Cumbria, I could see exactly why people find this species so much more attractive than their grey cousins, and also why they were so ruthlessly persecuted back in the 19th. and early 20th. century. 

Aside from their coat colour, magnificent tails and tufted ears, it's the sheer speed and agility of the native species that's particularly striking. In comparison, grey squirrels often look corpulent . Maybe that's more than a little due to the red's spartan diet of seeds, buds and bark, unlike grey's menu which includes more or less anything and everything, especially in urban areas where there's plenty to scavenge from waste bins. 

But in the past it was the red's liking for buds and bark that began its downfall. While I watched this one stripped bark off several branches and it was this kind of behaviour that led to intensive culling in the first half of the 20th. century, at the instigation of estate owners. The Highland Squirrel Club, formed in 1903, succeeded in exterminating 85,000 red squirrels over the next 30 years and that kind of persecution, together with habitat destruction, must have played a role in making the red squirrel population more vulnerable to the spread of their grey counterparts.

The Natural History of Railway Station Seating

This post is dedicated to anyone who has arrived at King's Cross station in London on a cold winter's night at 5pm. on a Friday, having parted with an obscene amount of money for a ticket back to Newcastle, only to find that there has been a freight train derailment at Peterborough and your train will be delayed by two hours - and then realised, after looking around the station, that there are no seats - anywhere - to sit out your weary wait with 2000 other disgruntled passengers who are desperate to get home.

It wasn't always like that. There was a time when railway stations did have seating, and while it could never have been described as comfortable, it was sometimes rather distinctive.

This beautiful example, now in the National Railway Museum at York, once graced the platform at Yarmouth South Town (served by the Great Eastern Railway, I think). With a fitting sense of plaice, bearing in mind that Yarmouth has a fine trawling tradition, the cast iron bench ends are decorated with a trio of flatfish and a couple of scallops. Lovely.

Had you found yourself waiting on a platform 'Up North' during the heyday of the North Eastern Railway, then you would have been sharing your seat with a couple of sinuous serpents.

If your train was late in the Lake District, then the Furness Railway supplied you with these fine benches decorated with red squirrels nibbling bunches of grapes.

There are still red squirrels in the Lake District (though precious few grapes to sustain them), but the Furness Railway has long gone ..... but these benches still adorn the promenade near Grange-over-Sands railway station.

I've Seen a Ghost...

About 50 years ago, when I was a feral 10 year-old growing up in the Sussex countryside, I was mooching through the reed beds at the head of Fishbourne Creek in Chichester harbour at dusk when a large brown bird rose up in front of me and flapped slowly above my head, transfixing me with a penetrating stare of its raptorial eyes. I knew instantly what it was - a marsh harrier - because I'd spent hours scrutinising the pictures in P.A.D. Hollom's Popular Handbook of British Birds in the library - and had the usually schoolboy obsession with rarities. Trouble was, no one would believe me. In those days marsh harriers were rarer than they are today, especially in that part of Britain (where there were, then, some ruthless gamekeepers that shot everything with a hooked beak and proudly hung it all on a gibbet) so all the wildlife 'experts' that I mentioned it to gave me a condescending smile and told me I must have got it wrong. I even began to wonder whether I'd imagined the encounter... but I knew what I'd seen.

I'm sorry to admit, to my shame, that I lapsed into 'wildlife expert' mode a couple of days ago. We were walking up a little valley near St. John's Chapel in Weardale when my wife, who was about ten yards ahead of me, turned and said "Look! A red squirrel". 

Now the last time I saw a red squirrel in the middle section of Weardale must have been about twenty years ago and - apart from a small population right up at the head of the dale, at Killhope (see pictures and post here) - it seems to be generally agreed that they are extinct here.

So my instant reaction was a dismissive "No, it can't be. They're long gone. Must be a grey squirrel with a  tinge of brown fur".

But it was indeed a red squirrel. A ghost from the past - except that it was as large and life and scolding us as it raced from the ground up the trunk of a larch tree. 

So I had to apologise for my shameful scepticism pretty quickly. It reminded me of why I've never like the term 'expert', which all-too-often equates with 'know-all".

Anyway, having got that admission off my chest, isn't this a lovely animal?

As we watched it leap from tree to tree it sent down a shower of golden larch needles every time it landed on a branch.

These are big enlargements of small sections of the whole image,so the quality isn't great, but who cares!

Magnificent ear tufts...

The big question, of course, is where did this animal come from? It's very unlikely that it made it down the dale from the distant population at Killhope - most of the intervening territory is open moorland. There are a lot of predators that could catch and kill it in the open (at one point on Sunday we watched eight buzzards soaring overhead). 

This larch plantation is too small to support a red squirrel population all year-round, but there is another much larger conifer plantation about a mile away, that might conceivably shelter a relict population.

Or maybe this is the result of someone's freelance red squirrel reintroduction programme?

There are no answers at the moment but it was a magical - and, I have to admit - humbling encounter.

Still Clinging On: Durham's Red Squirrels

The North of England Lead Mining Museum at Killhope in Upper Weardale (http://www.killhope.org.uk/Pages/KillhopeHomePage.aspx) is a wonderful place to learn more about what must have been one of the toughest ways to earn a living yet devised, hacking lead ore out of the Pennines. The fully restored mine and lead processing equipment, including a giant overshot water wheel, and the exquisite collection of mineral crystals extracted from local mines, are just a few of the delights that the museum has to offer. In the spruce plantation behind the mine you can still watch red squirrels at close quarters, at two feeding stations that have been set up there. They are probably extinct elsewhere in County Durham but a small population still thrives here. During our visit yesterday we watched four red squirrels , including this almost white-tailed example which is typical of our native sub-species – re-introduced populations of European origin tend not to display this distinctive feature. A couple of the squirrels still carried their long ear tufts, which red squirrels are supposed to lose in summer; presumably they hadn’t read the ID guides. If you visit Killhope, which opens at 10am., head straight for the squirrel hides, before the visitors to the mining museum start exploring the woodland trail, and you’ll stand the best chance of seeing these fast-disappearing animals.