Monday 7 November 2011

Grey squirrels in Cape Town!

The Company's Garden, Cape Town
02.11.11

Grey squirrel and pigeons

One could well believe that this photo had been taken in the UK instead of South Africa. In fact, it was rather shocking to see grey squirrels so far south!
The Company’s Garden has some very large oaks and they go for the acorns when in season, otherwise they were daring little beggars, one of them even climbed up my leg!

Later, we saw them again in the Kirstenbosch botanical garden. Apparently, there they are very fond of the seeds of Strelitzia regina ‘Mandela’s Gold’, a yellow flowering strelitzia. This variant from the normal orange flowers took 20 years of selecting and hand-pollinating to develop. There they have to cover up the seeds with a cap of fine-mesh wire, otherwise the squirrels will eat the lot.

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