The Secret Life of Grey Squirrels in Your Backyard! The Documentary

The grey squirrel is one of two species of squirrel found in the UK, and it can be seen the whole year round. It is not native here and was introduced in the 1890s. With a body length of 30 centimetres and an additional 25 centimetres for their tail, the grey squirrel measures 55 centimetres in total. They can weigh up to 600 grams. The grey squirrel, as the name suggests, has grey-brown fur with a long fluffy tail, which they often lie on their back. They are opportunistic, foraging on the ground and in the trees looking for acorns, bulbs, tree shoots, buds, fungi, nuts and roots. In our garden, we will often see them using bird feeders and tables. In the summer months, they can even predate bird nests, taking eggs or chicks. The grey squirrel is extremely intelligent. They are able to problem solve very fast, allowing them to break into our bird feeders, solve mazes and learn other species' danger calls. Grey squirrels build a drey as a nest, which can be in or on a tree. They are a compact, stick structure slightly larger than a football. This is then lined inside with bark, moss and leaves. The breeding season for the grey squirrel is between January and April, with them potentially having a second litter if there is an abundance of food in the summer. The grey squirrel has a gestation of six weeks, after which an average of three young will be born. After seven weeks, they follow their mother out of the branches and start to eat solid food at ten weeks. A month later, they will leave their mother to build a drey of their own and are ready to breed themselves at one year old. The grey squirrel is extremely agile and performs acrobatics precariously in the trees with little hesitation. Squirrels are able to jump five feet from the ground and can clear a seven feet gap between trees and other platforms. The grey squirrel is a type of tree squirrel and has the ability to climb down a tree head first. They can do this by rotating their super flexible ankles 180 degrees and digging their claws into the bark. Not only can they hang from their back legs on a tree, but they can also hang like a bat to reach branches that other animals cannot access. Living in trees is dangerous and accidents are inevitable. The grey squirrel however has all the skills to combat this risk. When faced with a fall, the squirrel will, within 0.3 seconds, lock its head in place on a landing zone. This allows them to use the theory of momentum to rotate their body by bringing their limbs in and out until they are in the correct rotation for landing. At this point, the squirrel flattens its body to form a parachute and uses its large tail as a rudder, slowing the descent. Finally, the squirrel will stretch its legs out and use its padded feet to cushion the landing. Contrary to some people's belief, the grey squirrel does not hibernate during the winter and so needs a food store so it does not starve. The squirrel therefore builds a pantry, stashing nuts in its territory for days when there is not enough food in the winter. But the squirrel does not just bury any nut, it has to decide which ones will stay fresh and will not rot. A squirrel tells a ripe nut by its smell and they will not stash any nuts that have been hollowed out by weevils, whose larvae grow in the shell of the nut. To hide the food, they simply dig a slight hole, place the nut in this hole and pat soil over it to hide it from birds. Squirrels remember the location of their nuts with landmarks, for example they may have buried the nut under a certain tree or next to a man-made structure. When looking for the nuts, when they are in the right place, near the right landmark, they look for disturbed soil and the nutty smell to find the nut. Any missed nuts will develop into new trees, helping the future generation as the trees are the original food source. Squirrels are regularly predated and with the introduction of pine martens this will only increase, however they do have tactics to prevent this. To escape predators, squirrels can run at 20 miles per hour and will go in a zigzag pattern, causing the predator to get confused and struggle to lock onto the squirrel. The grey squirrel will also use an alarm call that can commonly be mistaken for a bird's call. This is a warning call and it alerts other squirrels to a predator or tells other squirrels, I am here, keep out of my territory. A more gentle chirping call is used by the young squirrels when begging for food from their mothers and the males will imitate this begging call to tell a female they are interested in mating. By using the same call as the young, the males show that they are not a threat. I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did please leave a like and subscribe for more videos just like this.