Eastern Grey Squirrel-Photo Janice Dugas

I am happy to give a web presence to my little friend Peek-a-Boo.

Isn’t he cute ? I named this Eastern grey squirrel  Peek-a-Boo, because he makes multiple, very short appearances, in front of my office window from within the front lawn cedar bushes.

Poor him, he has fierce competition in finding food as we noticed lately that we have much more black squirrels in the neighborhood than previous years.

How come those little black squirrels seem to spread so fast?

Curious to know the answer, I googled on it and found the following information:

It was thought that British black squirrels, that appear to be more aggressive than the greys, were a mutant produced by two grey squirrels mating.

However scientists looking at the growing population in the eastern counties have found that the black squirrels are in fact an introduced subgroup that escaped from a menagerie of exotic animals in the east of England more than 100 years ago.

The first wild black squirrel was spotted in 1912 outside Letchworth in Hertfordshire and has been spreading throughout the area since.

The latest estimates show there could be as many as 25,000 in the east of England. Around Hitchin and Letchworth the black squirrels already outnumber greys and could be dominant throughout the eastern counties in the next 20 years.

Source:     By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent .    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/4298608/Origins-of-British-Black-squirrel-discovered.html

Black Squirrel-Photo Janice Dugas

Red Squirrel - Photo Marie-Agnes Leducq