Red squirrels

I live by capecastle forest and have loads of red squirrels visit every day we also have pine martins around, i see them but they are too fast to ever get a photo. We have a group of people who monitor them every day.

 

BM1K0377 by R MAURINS, on Flickr

This was taken close to our village, we are lucky that there's no alien Greys there, but they are spreading despite efforts to stop them.
On the subject of eating them, my pal shot a couple of Greys back in the 1970's, we had a syndicate rule that if you shot it, it should be eaten. They really did taste a lot like chicken, I was disappointed, I thought they'd taste of nuts!

 

We have some just down the road from where I live. According to my daughter there was a project a while back of supplying people with feeders made too small for Greys to get at the food but fine for Reds. Whether this has helped the numbers recover I don't know but there are some around - 1 which I saw dead by the side of the road the other day...boo

 

I love your red squirrels! Their fuzzy ears are so cute. We have the grey squirrels here and a red squirrel we call a fox squirrel, not as red as your red squirrel. Squirrels are everywhere, they thrive in cities where there aren't as many predators.

Why not eat the greys? Fried squirrel is quite tasty. I've shot, cleaned and cooked them, they are good. Take them to a butcher??? Now that's funny! My grandpa taught me how to clean them, my grandmother cooked them and we ate them. Fried squirrel, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn and biscuits. Fried squirrel could become the "new" fish n' chips!

 

I like your idea Bay but I don't honestly think fried squirrel will ever replace fish 'n' chips, not here in Britain anyway.

I'd like to point out I've relocated from the Isle of Man recently and am now living in Scotland, I've only seen two Red Squirrels in the two months here.

The decision by the Isle of Man government was not to introduce the Red Squirrels.

 

Is there a effort to help the red squirrels? Is there a wildlife government office or department that has a breeding and release program for the squirrels?

You could buy a pump-up pellet gun and go squirrel hunting! We actually have squirrel hunting season here.

 

It now appears that red squirrels carry the disease of leprosy and if bitten they could pass it on to humans.
Although unlikely in the wild , experts have warned conservationist to wear gloves when handling them.
Strongyloden is often amongst them at Brownsea Island and he's ok. and hasn't mentioned it.

 

What was the reasoning? Not enough evidence that they were ever native on the IoM?

 

There are plenty of people trying to help and protect red squirrels. The problem is with the greys, an introduced species. The grey squirrel occupies the same ecological niche but it is bigger than the red and so out competes the red for food. It isn't that the grey, being bigger is aggressive to the red but rather that it is stronger and is better at getting what may be a limited food supply. Probably it is also able to hold on to the cosiest tree holes which would give it an advantage in cold and wet weather.

So reintroductions will not really work as long as there are greys around. A mass cull of grey squirrels would be very unpopular and unacceptable to the British people.

 

I've provided the link below for you @Redwing.

http://www.manx.net/isle-of-man-news/79225/department-decides-against-introduction-of-red-squirrels