Adult grey squirrel

The grey squirrel has a grey coat with a pale underside, and a brownish face and feet. You can easily distinguish them from red squirrels, which have a red coat and ear tufts. Grey squirrels were introduced to Britain from North America in the 1800s, and have since replaced many of our native red squirrels.
Grey squirrels are very agile. They can scale trees headfirst by turning their feet so their claws point backwards to grip the tree bark. They build nests called ‘dreys’, out of twigs, leaves, grass and strips of bark.
Expert foragers, squirrels hoard food in caches. They have a very good spatial memory for recovering their caches, and can determine their own hoards using smell.