Crimes Against Songbirds

Already reviled for driving its red cousin out of its native habitat, the North American immigrant now finds itself blamed for falling numbers of birds in the UK.

A three-year study in Leicestershire found the numbers of spotted flycatchers rose or fell in inverse proportion to the number of grey squirrels in the area. The conclusion, according to Dr Chris Stoate, an ecologist who led the study, is that grey squirrels "eat eggs and young birds".

Squirrels were once thought to live off nuts and berries. But the "tree rats" are blamed for a sharp decrease in some of Britain's best-loved birds by feasting on fledglings and eggs in nest raids.

Research for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) shows the first hard evidence linking bird losses to grey squirrels. The study by the Game Conservancy Trust revealed that the spotted flycatcher, an endangered woodland bird, suffered huge losses of eggs and fledglings when grey squirrels were not controlled.

Numbers of birds, which had risen between 1993 and 2001 when pest control measures regulated numbers of squirrels, rats, foxes, magpies and crows, fell when the predator control was stopped. A 75 per cent survival rate for nests dropped to just 25 per cent.

This evidence is just the latest in a long line of "offences" that the grey squirrel has committed.

With a decline in songbird populations and the remaining red squirrels hemmed in to ever decreasing areas, Governments on both sides of the English / Scottish border are suggesting a strategic culling of grey squirrels to help maintain colonies of birds and red squirrels alike.

The controversial cull envisages the establishment of safe areas controlled by baited cages. If approved, it will certainly need to be a long-term, consistent pest control operation, lasting well into the next decade and beyond.

SDA Pest Control, "Long Acre", Bluntisham Road, Needingworth, St. Ives, Cambridgeshire
01480 465684