Back in the 18oo's rich folks brought the grey squirrel from America to the UK. Gradually the grey had out competed our native red to now in the Southern part of my homeland reds are completely gone. It's all so so sad. Residual populations inhabit various islands that surround the UK mainland they seem to be doing ok .But mainland south UK has been all but stripped of this species completely.
So we went on our first big trip in the campervan to see if we could find them. We did and i'll bang a big thanks up to the good folks we met along the way whom allowed both myself and my lady a chance to see our first ever British reds.
The shoot was a bit strange for me,two little chairs and wait under a couple of feeders tended by a lovely guy called Paul,a little table cups of tea on tap ( well I am English). We both beamed like silly children as slowly but surely reds started to appear . That complete feeling of joy utterly tempered by what had been taken from us. We have 109 years combined on this island ( I'm 55 Shaz 54) spend hours in our home southern woodlands and no red ever sighted simply because they are gone,because of man. What a catastrophe.
With a completely new species to me I was cautious about my effect on them so probably didn't make the best of the light or photo ops. I shot and evening and early morn then had to come home, a bit more time would have been fantastic as our observations made me more and more confident as to the squiggles being little bothered by our prescence.
Here is a female possibly nursing or just finished. If my asumptions are correct we caught her weaning a bigger kidlet from the last litter and she is heavily pregnant with another brood
The image is not cropped it is as framed
Canon 1dxii 1.4 ext iii 400DO IS ii 1/500 f 5.6 iso 12800 colour WB gentle nr, cloned dust bunnies in canons DPP selective NR and sharps PSCC I know my SS is too low for fast twitchy subjects just tried to make the best of what light we had. As time wore on I was able to drop the EXT and get closer, I just needed time to get my head around my subjects before closing in .
Thanks for all the thoughts on my previous images. It's sort of lovely to post my first ever sighting ,and one from those images here, of a red squirrel. It's also very hard that we had to travel so far due to them being wiped out by the American grey introduced here by man. These little red guys should be in every woodland here but they simply can't compete,throw in a couple of diseases the greys carry and we have lost something very very special, very special indeed!!
take care
stu