[The following is a replacement for the other big posting I did here that was lost in the Great Crash.]
The Last Stand in Merseyside and Lancashire
The next stage in my quest took me to Merseyside and Lancashire. I took my mum, a keen birder (and the subject of one of my threads last year in Your Birding Day), who fancied a trip to the west coast to see some Red Squirrels.
We went to Formby, a trip I was anticipating in some of my earlier posts here. A Scouser mate of mine who used to live near there warned me the Squirrels were becoming harder to see - but happily we had no difficulty at all. Almost as soon as we set off into the woods there we started seeing the Red Squirrels.
They looked very attractive and appealing. They had various shades of darker fur than some strains of Red squirrel, but I was pleased to see that it was still a lot redder than I was expecting (having seen one picture of Formby Reds looking black!).
In around three quarters of an hour we saw over 20 different Red squirrels - around 24 - even allowing for some of those we saw being the same ones reappearing. It was pleasing to see so many - a sign of a flourishing colony, despite the fact that the Greys are now just a few miles away, and despite the fact that there was a case of the dreaded parapox virus there last year.
The origin of the Formby Reds was something someone asked about by Beany on an earlier post. I asked, and it transpires that the population there is comprised of a mixture of introductions from the Continent in the 19th century, and the local indigenous population.
My mum and I then went over the border into Lancashire proper. The story of the Reds in Lancashire, as opposed to that of those in neighbouring Merseyside, is a very sad one. Even a decade ago there were still viable colonies of Reds in Lancashire - but by the end of the 1990s these had nearly all gone. Indeed, in 2004 during my research for this quest, one Lancashire wildlife expert told me that there were no Red squirrels left in Lancashire.
However, this proved to be pessimistic. Other Lancashire wildlife experts pointed out to me that there was still a remnant of a population in a few areas, comprising of a mixture of a handful of survivors, and juveniles branching out from the Merseyside population.
And, although these remnants were virtually impossible to locate, because they were fragmented, very small, and often based in private gardens, orchards, etc, we did have a rather good alternative. One helpful man at the LWT had told me of a population officially over the county border in Lancashire which was viewable - the colony in Southport Crematorium. Southport itself is in Merseyside, but the Crematorium, several miles to the east, is in Lancashire.
So off we went there - and we saw lovely views of one Red squirrel, which kept reappearing at the feeder that they have there. It had superb plumage, and was noticeably lighter than any of the Red Squirrels at Formby. This suggested to me that there might not be as much similarity between the Merseyside/Formby Reds and those next door in Lancs as is usually assumed.
What was of concern, though, was that in all the time we were there, we only saw the one. Now it is true that some others probably had better things to do than visit the feeder during the hour or so we were there - but you'd have thought that a fair number would in any given population. It suggested to us that the population there was small. And sure enough, when I checked a few weeks later with the man who had recommended the site, he said that there were three or four breeding females there - not a huge number. How long can this outpost at the Crematorium - the only established population of Reds left in Lancashire proper, and with Greys a few miles away - survive?
Even the famous Formby Reds are under threat. However, in the meantime, both the Formby population (plus a few others in Merseyside, apparently) and the Southport Crematorium outpost, survive and have viable populations. And the Red squirrels in both places were a delight to watch!
