PETER QUINCE
It was generally believed, until quite recently. that squirrels hibernated around this time of year and remained tucked up in their nests until the first warm days of spring. I re- member being told this when I was a boy. The same statement often appears, I believe, in older books on British mammals. This is a very good illustration of the power of a preconceived idea to defeat the evidence of one's own eyes.
Because squirrels were supposed to hiber- nate, it had to be believed that all the squirrels people saw leaping about the trees in winter must be exceptions which had perhaps, been disturbed in their winter sleep and so had gone outside for a breath of air before returning to slumber. Yet it is now known. that squirrels never hibernate in this country; the nearest they get to that state is spending a couple of days without leaving home when weather conditions are especially unfavourable.
Living as I do amid trees with a flourish- ing squirrel population, I find it strange that the idea that they disappeared from the scene in winter gained any credence. Our local squirrels show every sign of being as active as ever at this time, and are even especially noticeable with no leaves on the trees to cover their movements.
Every morning, they are to be seen going about their affairs in a mixed group of oak, horse chestnut and beech trees at the edge of the village. They seem to have a particularly busy time for an hour or two after the first daylight, retiring afterwards, possibly, to sleep off what they have gorged in the way of acorns and beech mast. I imagine their nests (it seems rather precious to refer to them as `dregs', although that is the official term) are pleasantly snug and warm. They are also surprisingly large: one such which I have been watching seems a massive col- lection of twigs for so small an animal, and I can well believe that squirrels go in for prolonged house-parties during the winter months, as they are said to do, with as many as ten of them crowding in at night time.
• We have no red squirrels, only grey. However, I don't share the prejudice against the grey variety, which seems to me no less eneaging than its indigenous cousin. Its athletic feats high up in the branches are no less remarkable, its movements and its dis- tinctly jaunty personality nb less entertain- ing. Our squirrels conduct themselves with an unmistakably proprietorial air about the wood; they chatter and scold if their terri- tory is invaded at an inconvenient moment, and on one occasion I was hit on the head by a piece of twig which, I strongly suspec- ted, had been thrown in my direction by an angry squirrel which took exception to my intrusion. Most of our wild animals' do their utmost to keep out of sight at all times, but the squirrels have no such shyness. They carry on briskly with no more than a prudent wariness about the approach of humans.
But there is a good deal of prejudice against the grey squirrel. I find. It is rooted in the belief that its introduction from America, something like a century ago is responsible for the disappearance of the native red species from a large part of the countryside. The grey has 'driven out' the red, it is often said; indeed this is as much a part of the general knowledge upon the subject as the notion that all squirrels hiber- nate used to be. The curious thing is that this belief, too, seems to be pretty well with- out foundation.
The excellent volume on squirrels in the New Naturalist' series, by Monica Shorten, looks closely at this question and concludes that it is very unlikely that attacks by grey squjrrels have played any important part in the red squirrel's decline. Such factors as changes in the environment, and, perhaps even more seriously, epidemic disease, to which the native species seems less resistant, are more likely to account for it. Indeed, before the American squirrel was ever a factor to be reckoned with, the red squirrel had already dwindled to the point of extinc- tion over large areas.
It is odd that the two things which many People 'know' about squirrels should be either plain -wrong or seriously misleading but so it is. The same could no doubt be said of much else that passes for our know- ledge of wild life. The country people of earlier times, who spent their whole lives close to nature, were stuffed with mis- information about animals and birds—such as the general belief that swallows passed the winter at the bottom of ponds, or that swifts never roosted but spent the night gliding effortlessly through the air at very high altitudes. It is not so very surprising that today, when most people live at many removes from the natural world, misconcep- tions should persist, even though we have the benefit of scientific observation by patient natural historians to put us right.
My only complaint against our squirrels is that they appear to be guilty of the vice of attacking young birds in their nests from time to time, a bad habit which the experts are not able to dismiss as myth. I found a newly-hatched cuckoo in a hedge-sparrow's nest last spring, which is not something I come across every year by any means; un- fortunately it was in the centre of the squirrels' territory, and one day when I passed that way I saw the young cuckoo was dead. Its head had been attacked and cracked open.
Exactly why some squirrels should do this to young birds is not certain, although one theory is that the skull of the bird reminds them of a nut, which sounds a bit far- fetched. Perhaps the truth is that there are delinquents among squirrels as there are among humans; and if that is the case, we are hardly in a position to be too censorious of the species as a whole.
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