Red squirrel

Red squirrel

Brownsea Island is one of the last remaining places in the country where red squirrels exist. Autumn finds them busy searching for food in the island's beautiful woodland.

"We're surrounded by water and grey squirrels can't get here – they're the big threat to reds – but of course we've got a fantastic habitat here for them," says Chris Thaine, Brownsea Island Reserve Manager for the Dorset Wildlife Trust.

"They like pine and coniferous woodland. We've got lots of Scots and maritime pine here, but also lots of mixed woodland coming back where we've cleared rhododendron to encourage tree regeneration. We've got roughly 200 [squirrels]. It's our optimum population. They don't have predators here so there's nothing really that threatens them."

Go behind the scenes of the squirrel assault course: are the reds tough enough?

View a slideshow of your amazing red squirrel pictures in the Flickr group.

Watch all the best red squirrel action from the shows.

Species information

Red squirrels are easily recognised by their red to brown fur and, of course, their big bushy tails and ear tufts. Their nests, or dreys, are made from twigs and lined with hair, moss and grass, and are found in the branches and forks of trees, usually conifers. Red squirrels eat nuts, such as hazelnuts, and also seeds.

Male and female squirrels can be very difficult to tell apart. Females give birth to kittens in spring and sometimes have second broods in the summer. The young are almost full size by November.

This native species has had a hard time over the last century. They are clinging on in parts of the north but in the south they are restricted to just islands, like Brownsea. It is estimated that only 150,000 red squirrels are left in Britain. The grey squirrel, introduced in the late 19th century and now numbering 2.5 million, has out-competed its red counterpart for food and passes on the squirrel pox virus, harmless to the grey but deadly for our red. This has recently become a problem for our old friends at Formby, which were featured in Autumnwatch last year. The National Trust website has more information about the Formby squirrels.

Thankfully for once there was recently some good news for red squirrels. The Zoological Society of London has released news from a study that showed that a few individuals seem to be immune to the squirrelpox virus, so there is hope that a vaccine could be developed.

There has also been lots of discussion about black squirrels recently, a strain of grey squirrel that has mutated to have much darker hair. The first sighting was as early as 1912 on a Hertfordshire common and the latest estimates show there could already be as many as 25,000 in the east of England. As well as the gene for hair colour changing, other genes may have altered too, and they may have higher levels of testosterone, making them more aggressive than both reds and greys. Anglia Ruskin University has released its findings about this.

How to help

You can help red squirrel conservation by registering your sightings with the national squirrel sightings database run by the Save our Squirrels project in England. In Scotland there is the Scottish Squirrel Survey and in Wales the Red Squirrel Project.

Feeding a squirrel

Watch Simon King feeding a red squirrel from this year's Springwatch.

Friday 24 October

Kate meets Chris Thaine, Brownsea Island Reserve manager for the Dorset Wildlife Trust to get the lowdown on the reds of Brownsea.

Red squirrel assault course

Will the red squirrels of Brownsea complete our course? Find out with added super slo-mo.

Clever squirrels!

We are putting our slo-mo camera to good use once again. These red squirrels are showing us just how clever they really are.