The Flying Squirrel

In June of 1998, Cathy and I were outside on our back porch at dusk, just finishing up painting some windows, when we heard a thump nearby. We looked over and, to our surprise, there was some sort of animal attached to our woodpecker feeder. Months earlier we had hung the feeder from a branch in the tree, but an animal had gotten into it and emptied most of the contents. So we moved it further out on the branch. Same result, including some serious gnawing on one of the holes. Probably a squirrel, we thought, climbing down from the branch. Armed with four college degrees between the two of us, we were not to be outsmarted! This time we tied a ten-foot cord and hung the feeder from a very high branch. A few nights later, we witnessed the culprit, a raccoon, which somehow managed to stretch from a brick wall and open up the top of the feeder. Moving the cord way out to the end of the branch placed the feeder well away from either walls or branches (though it was a bit springy; we added a horizontal string for stability).

That finally did the trick, or so we thought, until that night in June. We quietly moved inside to take a look at the strange visitor through our large dining room window. After some debate over whether the creature was a bat, we finally concluded that it must be a flying squirrel when it started eating the nuts. The same kind of flying squirrel that we'd been hiking through the wilderness of Todd Sanctuary to try to spot during several of Charlie Beers' spring nature walks. So much for finding animals in their natural habitat. They know where the food is!

The aerodynamic rodent returned for about a week—long enough for us to get a few shots. Unfortunately the flash to our good camera was broken so we had to settle for these existing light shots taken with 100 speed film and very long exposures (one to two seconds). With some patience, we sighted the creature coming in for dinner several times. It positioned itself on a brick pillar eight feet from the feeder horizontally and three feet vertical distance above the feeder. And jumped! We only saw it miss once in about four different attempts.

Photo showing arrangement of the feeder; squirrel is on the left, hanging from its feet and using its front paws to get the nuts and corn.

Close up of the squirrel dining peacefully.

Close up 2.