Watch out, spring is coming
I’m looking for urgent help from any nature lovers out there. I have just received an email from someone who lives in SW France,with the following question:
“our squirrels are red and some have brown/black tails. Suddenly I have some that are total brown or brown with black tails. Are these the young or are the red squirrels sometimes like that?”
Well, in my experience, the young are the same colour as the old, but that experience is only based on what I see hopping around outside the door, or stealing my walnuts in the autumn, so I could well be wrong. So the question is, does anyone reading this know about red squirrel colouring? If so please leave a comment at the end of this entry.
I’m sorry if you live in the UK and have to suffer those horrible scrawny grey things that look like big rats. It’s only cuddly fluffy red ones I need to know about.
Speaking of nature, it’s been the week of the crane (’grue’) migration, where enormous V formations of cranes pass noisily over our house en-route for somewhere colder and more miserable, because some bright ‘head of the flock’ announced that winter was over.
Do they ever think to themselves, let’s stay here in north Africa this summer, it will be much more pleasant than Norway (or whichever chilly spot they choose). Or at least, do a few of the stronger charactered cranes object - “we’re not coming, we don’t want to fly 3,000 miles just to be cold, thanks”.
By coincidence or design, the French air force decided to practice flying fast and low just as the cranes were flying by, which presumably doesn’t help either of their journeys very much. Although I’m not sure if it’s worse for the cranes to have a plane fly through their midst, or for the pilot of the plane to find a dead large bird on his windscreen.
And I’m not quite sure if we are allowed to eat a crance that gets beheaded by a fast moving plane and lands outside our kitchen window, or whether we have to make do with the rabbits and hares that approach the house with increasing bravado each day. If they keep it up, they’ll be nibbling salad with us in the kitchen by the end of March.
