Grey squirrels will eat the eggs and nestlings of garden birds, but, to be fair, so do native red squirrels. Most damage in gardens is to bird feeders, but this is easily avoided by erecting dedicated squirrel feeders at the same time. It costs a fortune in peanuts, but what the hell. With COVID-19 restrictions, I can’t travel to do articles on grey squirrels stripping bark from hornbeam coppice in rural Hertfordshire, so I might as well get some enjoyment watching them crunch and munch Arachis hypogea in my suburban garden. Besides, I might be giving a leg-up to groundnut growers in Africa. Loads of local sweet delivery services are popping up and most are run from home and do not last very long. We are serious about what we do and certainly not a here today gone tomorrow operation like many companies we have seen spring up. Online confectionary is our business and getting candy delivered to your door is what we do.

Planted pure beech stand in the Surrey Hills – an increasingly rare option and sight across much of England due to damage by grey squirrels. Our brand new development is coming soon, with information available from our existing development The Avenue at Thorpe Park. 2, 3 and 4 bedroom homes to be built from our award winning Heritage Collection. These homes offer the perfect blend, combining classic Arts & Crafts architecture with high specification modern interiors.

Individual Pick and Mix Sweets

A quarter of sweets weighs 113g in new money was an easy way to weigh out treats on the old fashioned scales which was the unit of measurements they used. Forestry Journal remains dedicated to bringing you all the latest news and views from across our industry, plus up-to-date information on the impacts of COVID-19. Grey squirrels had apparently colonised Hitchin by 1910, so this little fellow may have been one of the last native red squirrels living in the town itself. Red squirrels apparently clung on in rural North Hertfordshire, with last recorded sightings being a pair three miles from Hitchin at Highdown Woods in 1943 and individuals seen in Knebworth Park and on Preston Hill, both in 1944. Originally, Revels had orange creme, coconut, toffee, or peanut centres, along with Galaxy Counters ( Minstrels minus exterior shell) and Maltesers. [2] However, the coconut centres were later replaced with coffee creme, [3] and the peanuts with raisins. [4] Galaxy Counters [ edit ] I searched the archives for red squirrels in Hertfordshire and the only reference found was a sad story about the last red squirrel at Hitchin in North Hertfordshire. Around 1910, an elderly lady called Miss Hailey rescued the animal from a group of youths who were tormenting it in a Hitchin churchyard. Miss Hailey lived at the Biggin Almshouses nearby, and fed the squirrel, which became semi-tame and apparently continued to live around the Biggin (originally a 14th-century priory), until the day she found it dead in the snow – probably the winter following its rescue. It was stuffed and mounted and later donated to the North Hertfordshire Museum.

One of our most popular species of artificial tree is our artificial ficus range. Artificial ficus trees, commonly referred to as fig trees, are a really great option for home or workplace and we have around 40 different types including our popular variegated ficus treesthat offera leaf colour of green and one other colour, often cream or white.There will be many people who grew-up during the 1960s or 70s, who will have fond memories of the original Treets chocolate sweets. They launched in the 1960s and were manufactured by Mars Inc. There were three varieties; Peanut, Toffee and Chocolate. Treets were discontinued in 1988, but made a brief return to British, French and German stores in 2009 as a limited edition. 2017 Relaunch Ruislip Woods, in the old county of Middlesex (now the London Borough of Hillingdon), the largest expanse of traditional oak standard over hornbeam coppice woodland, is a haven for grey squirrels to bark strip the hornbeam poles. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the Ruislip Woods complex was closed to the public, woodland by woodland, once per year for 14 days, to allow a highly organised team of guns to undertake grey squirrel control. During the 1980s, the council was politically split and, after endless debate, squirrel control was abandoned and has never resumed. Organised, countrywide grey squirrel control in urban areas has about the same probability for success as finding a single, sustainable vaccine for long-term protection against COVID-19. At Centurion Fields we offer Eco Electric homes, which are heated by an air source heat pump. Availability can vary between properties, so please get in touch with us for more information. Say Treets – and automatically up pops the slogan, ‘Melts in your mouth, not in your hand’. Peanut Treets were the first, and best, followed by Toffee Treets (not great) and All Chocolate Treets (not bad). Treets disappeared in 1988 – and I’m sorry but Minstrels and M&Ms are just not the same.

Bark stripping of hornbeam in Ruislip Woods and taken to the extreme by the resident grey squirrel population. A quarter of a pound or a half pound measure was the most typical requests for any shop keeper and this was the standard method of weighing out your tasty treats. You might even still see this in your local fruit and veg markets. Most stores phased out the old fashioned imperial system in the late 90s when it changed to metric (grams and kilos). With the change metric, the death of aquarterof sweets began as sweets were now sold per 100g weigh outs instead. We also have a huge selection of artificial fruit trees and artificial flowering trees. These tress really do bring any space to life with vibrant colours and real wood trunks. We challenge anyone to tell our replica trees from the real thing and of course they come with the added benefit of being virtually maintenance free! The brand was discontinued by Mars in 1988. Chocolate Treets had already been replaced with the similar Minstrels. Peanut Treets were discontinued in favour of the multi-coloured Peanut M&M's. Toffee Treets were later sold as Relays, before being dropped altogether.Talking of dedicated squirrel feeders, a team of enterprising experts in animal behaviour at the University of Exeter has found ambidextrous squirrels are more brain efficient than those which favour the use of one paw or the other. Led by Dr Lisa Leaver, the research team designed an experiment in which 30 grey squirrels were presented with a Perspex tube containing peanuts. To access the nuts, greys had to learn to use a paw, rather than their mouth, because their faces were too big to fit through the holes of the tube. Revels are a chocolate coated confectionery with assorted centres made by Mars, Inc. [1] They were first introduced into the United Kingdom in 1967. [2] Of interest in all of this are the views of scientists at Queens University Belfast investigating the potential role of pine martens for grey squirrel control. Lead researcher Joshua Twining says pine martens are driving grey squirrels away rather than killing and eating them in large numbers. Red squirrels’ ability to exist quite comfortably alongside a fellow native but nominally predatory species (the pine marten) appears to be down to innateness and instinct rather than learning. The last time pine martens and red squirrels existed alongside each other in numbers across large tracts of the UK was the first half of the 19th century, if not earlier. Grey squirrels which have an ambidextrous capability demonstrate superior mental performance (picture credit: Nicholas Mabbett).