While digging out my blighted tomato plants last month I noticed the cobnuts on the trees bordering our plot were turning brown and would soon be ready to fall from the trees. I’ve never seen a squirrel at the plot but I ventured a guess that where cobnuts are found the squirrels will surely appear. Sadly I still haven’t seen any squirrels but the broken open shells are evidence of their cobnut feasting. A bit of scavenging myself produced a couple of handfuls of uncracked nuts and I wondered if the squirrels knew something I didn’t about the quality of the nuts inside or had just feasted until full and trundled off. I had a vision of a little squirrel, nut in paws giving it a shake and a tap before dropping it in disgust at it’s hollowness. 
I’m going to make the honeyed hazlenuts recipe from the River Cottage Handbook to preserve them but I need to get cracking first to see if the nutty insides are worth the effort.
Very envious of those. We’re considering planting some of our Coppice area with Hazel to hopefully grow our own squirrel food – what could be better than native Red Squirrels eating home-grown food? I used hazel in a mixed hedgerow planting at our previous house and had cob nuts within three years.
Geez……..we are so tired of squirrels………sorry!
Bilbo, you sound very green fingered, or would that be brown fingered with hazel growing?
Darla – I can understand that seeing where you live. I feel the same about butterflies….
It is years since I gathered hazel nuts! My granmother lived up a country laneway and the trees lined both sides of it ,now long gone to ‘progress’