“It’s just a happy thing to see - we should be hanging our heads in shame if we let the red squirrel fail,” says nature enthusiast Pete Muldoon.

As a volunteer in Formby’s woodlands on Merseyside, he is part of efforts to stop the decline of the endangered native creature following the introduction of grey squirrels from North America in the late 19th Century.

While England is thought to have about 2.7 million greys, there are only about an estimated 39,000 red squirrels left.