Nature Notes September 2015

September will herald the changing seasons, although I’m sure we are all keeping our fingers crossed for an Indian summer. One of the first signs of autumn is the sight of swallows gathering restlessly on the telegraph wires. Most will leave during September, making the long journey to spend their winter in South Africa, covering around 200 miles each day at speeds of up to 22 miles an hour. We won’t see them back again until next April.

If, like me, you have a hazel nut tree in your garden, you are likely to be visited at this time of year by animals eager to share your bounty. A greater spotted woodpecker repeatedly visited our tree last September and carried away several nuts. However, many of them were immediately transferred to the top of a telegraph pole and hammered into the loose wood at the top, as shown here. We saw the woodpecker return just after Christmas, prying the nuts loose and carrying them off.

Another autumn visitor to our garden is the grey squirrel and it can soon strip all of the nuts from the tree if not disturbed. Although the grey squirrel occasionally has traces of russet on its back and head, it can never be mistaken for our native red squirrel, photographed below whilst I was on a trip to Scotland recently. In addition to the bright colour, the red is also a smaller and less robust animal.

Red squirrels were formerly resident throughout the United Kingdom, but following the introduction of the grey squirrel from the USA in 1870s the red squirrels were soon on their way to extinction. The greys were larger, better able to store fat to see them through the winter, and they also carried the squirrel pox virus. The reds are now confined to Scotland and a few small areas of England. However, recent research has shown that they are making a comeback in some areas of Scotland and Ireland and that these are the same areas where pine martens are also thriving. Pine martens are fearsome predators of squirrels, but whereas the smaller reds have evolved to evade the martens, the greys are less agile and are caught more often. It would be wonderful if both the red squirrel and the pine marten were to thrive at the expense of the invader.