Thursday 5 November 2009

Sweet Chestnuts and squirrels



There's a small copse of trees near the main road which contains several large sweet chestnut trees (Castanea sativa). Walking past there today, I stopped to watch about half-a-dozen squirrels foraging through the leaves for the abundant fallen chestnuts (it looks to have been a good year for the sweet chestnut harvest this year).

The squirrels were all grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), which are abundant in the village. One of the squirrels was black - not a different species, but a melanistic form of the grey squirrel not uncommon around here.

It's worth noting that this scene is a completely non-native one: the sweet chestnut is thought to have been introduced to Britain by the Romans, while grey squirrels were introduced from the USA in the late 19th Century.





1 comment:

  1. Hi Penny. Welcome to the world of blogging. I enjoyed your recent posts & the striking photos of autumn. Have added you to my 'watch list' so will be popping by regularly. Frank.

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