Out on the west side of Flanders this morning and a lick of flame running up a tree caught my eye. A red squirrel. I don't see many of these as the greys have taken over where I live so any sighting makes a day special. For red squirrels Flanders Moss is quite special. Flanders seems to lie close to the boundary of where the greys have expanded to and where the reds have retreated to i.e. you can see reds to the north and west of Flanders and grey to the east and south.
There is now a red squirrel project Saving Scotland's Red Squirrels www.scottishsquirrels.org.uk that is working hard to save red squirrels before they go extinct so as soon as I was in the office I sent in my record to help them get a picture of where there were still red squirrels surviving.
Something that I heard the other day that gave me a bit of hope for the beleaguered red was that where grey squirrels meet pine martins, the pine martins are more likely to eat the greys than the reds as they are heavier, less nimble (fatter) and hence can't escape as easily as the reds. And pine martins are expanding into central Scotland and Flanders itself. One person has told me that they have seen one right on the edge of the Moss. So it is a nice thought that a recently endangered but now recovering species will help to save another endangered species by eating the introduced one.
