Red Squirrel

The red squirrel, one of our most popular and well loved mammals, is Britain’s only native squirrel and has been part of our fauna for thousands of years. Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park is one of the few places where this special animal can still be seen.

Red squirrels have a reddish brown fur with a bushy tail and prominent ear tufts, more visible in the autumn and winter. Their coat colour can vary with time of year and location and in winter it can be a deep chocolate brown. Their underside is always a white-cream colour.

Adult red squirrels can grow up to 24cm (9 inches) long and weigh about 350g (12 ounces), similar to a large packet of biscuits! Their impressive bushy tail can grow almost as long as their body.

Red squirrels live in a range of habitats from conifer forests to broadleaf woodlands. Within Scotland they tend to thrive in dense woodlands that contain a good mixture of cone bearing trees. These forests provide a good food source throughout the year.

In the spring and early summer they will eat the buds, flowers and shoots from spruce larch and pine. During the rest of the year they will take advantage of the cone crop, stripping away the scales to get at the seed source. Autumn provides an opportunity for a varied diet with berries, fungi and hazel nuts top of the menu.

It is commonly thought that red squirrels hibernate. In fact, squirrels continue to forage throughout the winter; although they do gather and store extra food just below the ground or in tree clefts for the colder months. Red squirrels can be seen all year round, but are most active in spring, summer and autumn.

If you would like to find out more information about squirrel watching in the National Park please visit our Wildlife Watching pages. A number of hides have been set up so you can observe these captivating creatures.

A red squirrel’s nest is called a ‘drey’ and they can be found in the forks or hollows of trees. The dreys have a frame of twigs and are lined with moss, grass and soft hair providing a safe and warm home in which to sleep and rear their young. During spells of bad weather red squirrels will hide out in their dreys.

Red squirrels tend to mate during February and March and if the food supply is plentiful, again in June and July. During the mating season watch out for squirrels chasing each other, jumping from tree to tree and scampering up tree trunks! The female squirrel can have one or two litters each year, with three young squirrels in an average family.

Today’s red squirrel faces the threat of local extinction from the larger, more competitive North American grey squirrel. In broadleaved woodlands the grey squirrels are able to digest acorns and hazel nuts when they are green leaving a limited food source for their red cousins. Grey squirrels also carry the squirrelpox virus. This disease doesn’t affect greys much, but it is lethal for reds and causes symptoms similar to myxomatosis in rabbits. There are now only about 160,000 reds in Britainand three-quarters of these are in Scotland.

Fortunately, red squirrels are still a fairly common sight around the woods of Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park. You can help our National Park Rangers find out more about squirrel distribution and habitats by recording where and when you see both red and grey squirrels on one of our survey forms.

For more information about red squirrel conservation in the National Park please click here.