This weekend, some 40 volunteers descended on Bryn Arau Duon Forest to search for the rare red squirrel. Bryn Arau Duon is a block of largely single species coniferous plantation near Pumsaint in Carmarthenshire. The forest is managed using the principles of continuous cover forest management, allowing the tree canopy to stay intact - perfect for red squirrels. Efforts have been made to keep grey squirrels out of the forest and grey squirrel trapping has been undertaken successfully in and around the forest.

Bryn Arau Dyon has been somewhat of a hot spot for red squirrel sightings, with 6 sightings this year, 4 being in the last month! This sounded very promising for our survey.

We congregated en masse for a briefing on the survey methodology; and to collect survey packs before setting off.

Everyone was split into groups of two or three and given a transect to walk in the forest. We walked the transect slowly and quietly, scanning the trees, and stopped every 100 metres to spend 5 minutes looking and listening for squirrels. We were hoping that we would see a red squirrel leaping from a branch or a tell-tale sign of a drey. We were also listening out for the sounds of a cone dropping to the forest floor as a squirrel enjoys a snack or an alarm call of a perturbed squirrel, warning us to leave well alone.

After we had walked to the end of the transect and completed the ‘stop, look and listen’ aspect of the survey, we retraced our footsteps and walked back along the transect. This time, we had our eyes looking to the ground, searching for feeding signs of red squirrels in the form of stripped and nibbled pine cones. We were also looking for carnivore scats, particularly pine marten scats. Fox scats were recorded and any scats that could have come from a pine marten were collected and bagged up for DNA analysis.Unfortunately for our team it was ‘nil point’ as we didn’t see any squirrels or signs of squirrel activity, nor any interesting scats. 

Thankfully we were in the minority and most teams saw plenty of feeding signs, although no-one had any squirrels sightings.

At the end of the survey, we were treated with the results from a nearby camera trap, which had captured a red squirrel on a feeder just a couple of days before the survey.

 

Thanks to everyone who came along to the survey and made for a great team effort.  

This survey was conducted as part of our Mammals in Sustainable Environment (MISE) project, funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

For information on future surveys and events, please contact project officer Jenny MacPherson.