grey squirrels love em or hate them you must admire their tenacity

[healfdan]

You have to hand to them, we humans have tried all forms of control on these naturalised and mainly unwelcome squirrels but still they prosper. I have grown to admire them, although they have caused me lots of grief over the years from chewing my rubber and replacement plastic dustbin lids, wrecking my cheaper bird feeders, raiding birds nests, uprooting plants and on two occasions ruining curtains when they have entered the house. But part of the attraction is trying to outwit them.........in my case a work in progress.
In answer to the question posed by actionfich most Grey squirrels have mid brown to chestnut hairs. They can be seen on the upper back and along the flanks and limbs. Often the distribution of chestnut hairs causes them to be mistaken for the native red by people unfamiliar with squirrels.

[actionfinch]

thank you healfdan.I noticed it more in the one squirell thats all but thank you .
What i dont understand is that they come onto bird feeders and pinch there food, but after reading another thread about mixing bird seed in with the nuts to vary there diet, i have seen that they just pick out the nuts and leave the seed in the squirell box i use.
so why invade the feeders and upset the birders...

[Bill Badger]

I had no real feelings one way or the other about grey squirrels until my neighbour started shooting them. When he explained about how they rip apart other small animals an birds I started to take note of the wildlife in the vicinity of our gardens. I have to say that the increase in birdlife has been amazing! We live in a built up area, but have large gardens. Wrens, robins, chaffinch, greenfinch, coaltit, bluetit and more - we see them all regularly, whereas five years ago we saw very little. The number of grey squirrels that have been 'removed' in this time? Over 300!