As a child I often dreamed of living in a treehouse built in the branches of an ancient oak. I would press my ear against the oak tree, willing to hear its message to me, certain, as children often are, that there was a message to be heard. As I’ve grown, the most magical thing about the woodland has become the thing that you have to focus a little more closely to notice: the creation of the trees I so love.

For grey squirrels and woodland birds, autumn is a busy season: a time for fattening up and preparing for the coming quiet; and for creating stores that will allow them to survive when food is scarce. Acorns, and other nuts and seeds, are a vital food source for these creatures. And that’s how a simple, yet special relationship has developed between them and the trees in their woodland habitat.

A common sight is a squirrel, ignorant to all else, busying itself with burying acorns in seemingly random spots, ready to unearth later. Sit patiently at the foot of a tree, and you will be rewarded by the glimpse of a fluffy tail as the squirrel scampers down to search for bounty.

Intent on the task at hand, it rummages through piles of golden leaves until it finds what it’s looking for. After an inspection, the acorn is carried away to what has been deemed a suitable place, and in less than a minute it’s efficiently buried. And then the process starts over again, countless times. It can quickly become hypnotic if you sit and watch.

But it isn’t random, this process. The squirrel isn’t simply choosing an acorn and burying it. It is systematically examining and scrutinising its prize. It’s evaluating the benefit of burying each nut, deciding whether to store it for later or enjoy it now. High value nuts, those that will provide more nutrition and are less likely to perish, are the most likely to be buried as they will survive longer, ensuring much needed provisions for this and other squirrels to unearth in the coming winter.

Due to their excellent memory and sense of smell, squirrels track down much of their hoard later on. However, there are inevitably caches that get missed. And that is the simple beauty of the system. Squirrels, and other distributors such as jays, are vital to trees because, in order to successfully take root and thrive, the seeds or nuts need to be distributed farther from their parent tree than is possible for them to fall. If they take root too close, they will be blocked from the sun by their parent’s foliage. Not only that, those high value nuts, the ones specifically chosen to be buried, are more likely to set root, because of their quality.

That first act of burying a treat is the first step towards the life of a new tree. There’s an almost beautiful art to this. A symbiotic relationship that ensures both tree and squirrel survive to the next generation. At first glance, autumn appears to be the season of harvest, signalling the end of that year’s new life. But when you look more closely you can see it’s actually the opposite. It’s the beginning of a new cycle. Let’s imagine in the next hundred years those tiny acorns standing proud and strong in their woodland, with a little girl pressing her ear to them, hoping to hear a secret.

Leanne Manchester, 2016