Facts you need to know about GREY SQUIRRELS!
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Published 2021-02-04
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Grey squirrels are one of the most familiar and well known mammals in the UK, so it may be surprising that they are not native to this country. They were first introduced from north America in 1876 and gradually spread across England and wales. Unfortunately, as the grey squirrel colonized, they carried with them a virus that was fatal to the native red squirrels. They were also far better at remembering where they had stored food and could eat a much wider range of food than the reds. This eventually led to them going pretty much extinct throughout the southern and central UK.
A grey squirrels diet changes throughout the seasons and includes Acorns, bulbs, buds, fungi, nuts and roots. Occasionally in the spring and summer they will also raid birds nests for their eggs and chicks. They dont eat everything that they find straight away and will instead cache food throughout the autumn. This food helps them during the winter, when unlike a lot of small mammals they don't hibernate and fresh food may be in short supply.
Grey squirrels are active during the daytime only. Throughout the night they hide away in a nest made of twigs, bark, leaves and grass. This is known as a dray. These are sometimes inside the hollows of trees but can also be constructed exposed in the upper branches or even inside lofts, attics and barns.
It is in these drays that grey squirrels give birth to their young, from January to April. Each female will have between 2 and 8 young which are known as kittens, or kits. These are born hairless and blind and spend the first 7 weeks of their lives being fed milk by their mothers inside the dray. By the time they start to venture outside they are miniature versions of their parents, and after a further 3 to 4 weeks they are fully independent and begin to construct and use a dray of their own.
In the wild, the average lifespan of a grey squirrel is only 1 to two years but in extraordinary cases they can live beyond ten years of age. In captivity this is even higher with one squirrel living to be 23 and a half years old. Their main cause of death is collisions with cars, but they can also fall victim to domestic cats, starvation and increasingly to predation from the recolonizing pine marten.
No fact file about grey squirrels would be complete without at least a mention of their controversial reputation. Some people refer to them as tree rats and there are regular calls for both local and nationwide culls. There is an argument that culling them would give the native red squirrels a better chance of recolonizing and this has been shown to work on the isle of Anglesey. There the grey squirrels were completely eradicated and the population of reds went from less than 40 to more than 700 individuals. A second, and perhaps more widespread reason for calls to cull them is the damage that they can do to forestry plantations. It is estimated that grey squirrels cause more than £50million pound worth of damage to these plantations every year by stripping bark and killing saplings. Everybody seems to have their own opinion on the culling of grey squirrels, so please feel free to share yours in the comments down below.
"Red squirrel [explored]" by hedera.baltica is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
"New Born Baby Squirrels" by jaredhouliston is marked under CC0 1.0. To view the terms, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/cc0/1.0/
All Comments (21)
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I think the gray squirrel is BEAUTIFUL!! So is the Red Squirrel!!
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Good way to save the woodlands would be to stop building on them.
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We have had a gray Squrell 4 eight months, Hes been back in the wild for 2 months, He comes to visit every day, He's So sweet, We Love Him very much
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I find gray squirrels adorable and a lot of fun to watch. They are quite intelligent and resourceful. We also have Southern Fox Squirrels which are unique in that their bodies are mostly black and they have white areas on their faces.
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I have 5 greys, including 2 babies I feed regularly I spend roughly £88 a month on them giving the mixed nuts and Brazil and monkey nuts, this will be my 8th year of devoting my life to these fur babies who have become a huge part of our family
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I’ve rescued several Greys. Two have chosen to stay with us💚
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I have 3 grey squirrels who visit my balcony multiple times every day, one of whom has even ventured inside when the door was open in the summer, to explore my living room, furniture and give me a tentative sniff. I feed them nuts, seeds, fruit and always put fresh water out, too. Very entertaining to watch them scale the wall and sit up on their haunches, nibbling on a walnut half, and peering at me through the window, or chasing each other through the branches of the silver birch trees.
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No culling 😔 i feed all grey squirrels in my area they are adorable ❤️❤️❤️
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Thank you 👍really enjoyed your video, I was just looking at videos to see if I could gather more info as iv brought up a baby squirrel for a year from a tiny kit to fully grown adult male, I never in a million years thought I could love anything more than I fell in love with my izzie, if you had told me I was going to spend a year devoted to a squirrel I would have said don't be mad, but yeh it happend on a cold February night after work I found my izzie cold and had hyperthermia, it had been in a tree that had been cut down that day, I took him home popped a fluffy sock in the microwave then snuggled him in, rushed to tesco for puppy milk and syringe and got back home where we started our year together, how can anyone call them vermin, there beautiful, he's totally independent now and goes off into the local tree's but always comes to say hi every day and for his favourite nuts, has totally made me into the mad squirrel girl next door😂❤️🐿️
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I often find that discussions about culling a species turn very emotive rather than concentrating on clear conservation objectives and on facts. What would one try to achieve by culling greys? One argument is to save the woodlands but this should be put into perspective. We should ask ourselves “how much difference will this make?”. Humans are constantly destroying woodlands for new estate developments and roads, so surely the bigger problem is human driven habitat loss and not the squirrels. If the reason is more on the lines of bringing reds back, you have to question how realistic it is that reds establish populations in the UK. How will we prevent greys from recolonising? When there’s a population collapse, which could be induced by a widespread cull, recolonisation can happen very rapidly as the resources are plentiful. In December 2019, it’s been made illegal for rescued greys to be released by wildlife rescue centres which is an attempt to save the forestry money by reducing losses in timber. How effective is this going to be when on average 700 greys are rescued each year? I doubt this new law will a significant effect on the population of greys. Another consideration is the money. An argument that is often used by the Government in support of culling greys is to prevent millions of Pounds being lost by the forestry. How much would, and does, squirrel control cost? What would the saving actually be? Culling greys because they are invasive is another common argument. There are about 2.5 million greys in the UK, which quite frankly is “nothing” compared to other invasive species, some that we treasure and love. Rabbits, pet cats and pheasants fall under this remit. To use cats as an example, there are about 11 million pet cats in the UK and they kill about 27 million wild birds each year. Does that mean we should start culling, or stop breeding, domestic cats? On an even greater scale, the game bird industry releases about 40 million pheasants and red—legged patridges each year. These are released just to be shot and the total mass of these released birds exceeds the total mass of all native breeding birds in the UK. These releases destabilise wildlife populations all across the country, they affect local plant communities and alter soil chemistry. So where does the problem lie?
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Gray squirrels are so much fun to play with. Ive always been a Doolittle kid because i didn't have much of a social life growing up so i learned how to vocalize different animal sounds. I get so giddy when my squirrel call brings out my local friends.
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I just love them. People say they are virmin but I love them.
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Never knew these little floofs were taken so far from their native turf to the UK. They're ubiquitous here in my home state of Virginia, USA. Love seeing such graceful creatures.
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For the last 4 or 5 months I have a squirrel that will make alot of noises in the back of my house trying to get my attention so I can feed her. She will start making noises in the roof or on top of the shed which is next to my bedroom window. She also starts making lots of noise on top of my trash can and once she sees me she stays there making a lil dance till I feed her 😆 she's gotten so comfortable that now she even comes to my window and comes to my feet hours will pass n she will be around me and if not like I said all I need is for her to knock on the door 🥴😅 she loves been fed but I still don't know if is a male or a female🙃 of course I won't be able to turn it around and check. So am trying to figure it out. I named her munchy. She also stuffs her mouth digs in my yard and will come back to me. This is a daily thing. I have at least 10 videos of her. What I like the most is her lil dance 🥰 she starts like dancing poring and wags her tail in a friendly manner when she gets close to me. Am in love with her 😍
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I love all squirrels
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Grey squirrels are just squirrels. They fill the same niche as reds so after a bit of nature adapting I don't think they would have much damage ecologically. I live in Finland and the reds cause the exact same problems as the greys in the uk. They raid bird nests and eat bark weakening the trees and store food for winter exatcly like greys and so on. Although it would be nice having the native reds instead of greys, let's not demonise greys for doing the exact things reds do aswell. Also I have never heard of americans complaining about greys damaging forestry and what not
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It’s humans’ faults that grey squirrels are in an environment that they’re not native to. At the very least, WE’RE more like “rats” than the grey squirrel is!
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I love grey squirrels. ❤
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I know it's not PC, but I love grey squirrels. "Grey" suggests dullness but they are very colourful, especially those with large amounts of orangey-brown colouring in the spring/summer. These, and the various shades of grey and black contrast beautifully with their white undersides. I also like the slighty different-shaped heads. I accept that the reds have to be protected and re-introduced in some areas, but this doesn't mean we have to exterminate all greys. They have a charm and fascination all of their own. Incidentally, my understanding is that they strip the bark to provide a binder for their dreys, not to eat as some people think. I've seen them trying to rip items on clotheslines, flags etc. for the same purpose.
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A "dray". Now I know the name for it! Before, I called it the squirrels' nest. The one near me is comprised of the stuffing from an old sleeping bag, situated just beneath it. Looks very nicely insulated and very well made. Clever squirrels!
