That would be my guess too. Plus I think deer are an increasing problem and certainly eat/tear at bark.

Bigger sycamores seem to have had a good summer with a lot less black spot than usual. Stress levels for trees will have been lower than in recent years with not so much heat and enough moisture.

I think that's the case here, Dev. The one in the churchyard is massive now and looking magnificent. Addition: Saw a muntjac here this morning... 👍

I noticed locally that sycamores were dropping leaves from end of July which was a bit unusual, we don't have either squirrels or deer.

A young English Lime tree in my garden has already lost about 80% of it's leaves whilst the more mature one has also been shedding since the beginning of August.

As regards the Sycamores, I have noticed similar damage to Sycamores in South Wales, though not quite as widespread as in Devon. If it's caused by animals, I suspect that it's grey squirrels as I would have thought that South West Wales wouldn't be all that deer friendly. I'm pretty sure that this hasn't been as bad before so I'm curious as to whether anyone else has noticed it.

Edit: Found this article 

https://treetalk.substack.com/p/sycamore-summer-symptoms 

Seems to be quite widespread and caused by the grey squirrel. I hope this year is a blip.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly38wr66dro 

I bet they are regretting their 'prank' now. Remanded in custody till sentencing on July 15th for their own safety.

What a shame...

story of the Sycamore Gap.

"This summer, surprisingly notable symptoms of poor health among individual

sycamore trees have been observed by the team here at The Tree Council

and by others in the tree sector, so we headed out into the field and delved

into the literature to investigate this trend."

https://treetalk.substack.com/p/sycamore-summer-symptoms