January has turned out to be a month that promised more than it delivered in terms of evidence of red squirrels. On 10 January we presented the findings of the Red Squirrel Project to the Bute Museum & Natural History Society. It was great to explain what we have been doing and to share our findings to date.

It was with some level of anticipation that we deployed our squirrel feeders and trail cameras into the grounds of Mount Stuart at the end of December. There had been several very good red squirrel sightings in recent months and we were sure that we would soon have video evidence of them. The reality is that so far we have not found evidence of squirrel activity. We have a week or two to run, so there is still time for Mount Stuart’s squirrels to arrive, but it illustrates how much patience is needed when trying to find these animals. What does a lack of evidence of red squirrels in Mount Stuart mean? Were the sightings of a few months ago just a single squirrel passing through? Was it perhaps one from Cnocnicoll Wood, just across the road, that came by and decided it preferred life back home? We don’t know and we can’t know.

Perhaps in 2023 or 2024 we will be able to embark on more detailed studies of individual squirrels as part of finding out what prevents them from becoming common across the Isle of Bute.