An early breakfast

This morning, whilst wandering through woods at Haddo House, I came across the breakfast table of a red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris.

We are truly blessed in Scotland in that we still have red squirrels. The red squirrel is native to Britain, but its future is increasingly uncertain as the introduced American grey squirrel Sciurus carolinensis expands its range across the mainland. There are estimated to be only 140,000 red squirrels left in Britain, 75% of them in Scotland, but over 2.5 million greys.
The grey squirrel was introduced to many sites across Britain between 1876 and 1929, and spread rapidly. It has displaced the red squirrel through better exploitation of deciduous woodland  and infection by squirrel-pox, a disease fatal to reds but not to greys