14 SEPTEMBER 1951, Page 13

The Red Squirrel

When I was in Devonshire, I noted with great regret that the grey squirrel had driven out the red as far west as the Otter River. Yet a friend tells me that, as she was sitting in her garden nine miles from Oxford last week a red squirrel climbed down a pine close to the house, prinked over the lawn as though the ogreish tree-rat were but a bad dream and sat up to clean his whiskers. Whereupon chaffinch, greenfinch, robin and greater spotted woodpecker emerged from the bushes and spinney to be observers of this astonishing spectacle. I remember the blacksmith of Chipping Campden once telling me he had seen the grey attacking the red, but the usual procedure is for the red to retire further afield from the truculent and dominant species.