Squirrel Control in Tring

Squirrel Control in Tring

Tring sits at the foot of the Chilterns with beech woodland immediately above it, and beech is the relevant detail. Beech mast — the nuts — is a primary grey squirrel food, and the Chilterns are beech country.

Beech does not crop evenly. It produces a heavy mast every few years, and a good mast year is followed by a high squirrel population the following season. Which means squirrel pressure here genuinely varies year to year in a way it does not in a town with less woodland.

Photographs on this page are for illustration purposes only.

Beech and mast years

Why Some Years Are Much Worse

After a heavy beech mast, more young survive the winter and the following spring produces a noticeably larger population. Those animals then need somewhere to live, and the properties on the woodland edge are the first places they look.

You will notice it as a year when everybody locally seems to be talking about squirrels, followed by a quieter one or two. It is not imagination and it is not anything you have done differently.

The practical response is the same regardless of the year, which is to make the roofline not worth attempting. Proofing done in a quiet year is cheaper and less urgent than proofing done in a busy one, and it works just as well.

Short answers

Tring Questions

Going further

Squirrel Guides