Food: Nuts, especially acorns and hazel nuts; other fruits, buds and young twigs; strips bark to eat nutritious tissue below. Also eats insects, birds eggs and nestlings, and regularly 'steals' from bird tables and bird feeders. A serious forest pest, also damaging garden and orchard trees.

Habits and Signs: Diurnal, keeping mainly to the trees. Neatly split hazel nut shells and roughly chewed cones litter feeding sites.

Habitat and Range: Mixed woodland, orchards, parks and gardens. A North American animal, introduced to the British Isles late in the 19th century and now common all over England and Wales, where it has largely replaced the native Red Squirrel; less common in Scotland and Ireland.