Garden snails up trees

[Lin Murray]

Hello all

On a certain group of trees on my local common large groups of garden snails (Cornu aspersum) have gathered up the trunks for many years now. The trees are varied, Sycamore, Beech, Oak, Hawthorne. They also gather on the old 2nd World War radar station about 100m away. There are at least 70 to 80 individuals in the large groups with many satellite groups of lesser numbers. As far as I can see they are all the same species and of varying age groups. Some have climbed on top of others. The trees are in a line on the edge of a common bordered by agricultural land and face North West. The tree line in about 1km from the North West Norfolk coast so receives regular salty blasts. Haven't found snails on any of the many other trees that exist on the common. They also don't seem to move away from the tree once they get there. Admittedly I haven't spent much time observing their daily movements but would like to know if anyone has any idea what is going on. There are plans to chop down the Sycamores so it would be nice to get a handle on it before then.

Cheers for now

LM

[Meta menardi]

Hi, this coincides with a recent thread.
Tree hugging snails, why?