Another native squirrel

Today was another of those days that started out nice and sunny in the morning…

and was anything but when we went for our mid-day walk….

at least a hundred ducks in this area, mainly Mallard, but also some American Wigeon, Gadwall and Green Wing Teal.

some more Mallards over here and a few scattered Bald Eagles – that was about it…

on the way back you can see that it is snowing up the valley – still a bit of snow left from what rec’d Saturday evening…

What I thought I would concentrate on today is another of our native squirrels.  I’ve mentioned that the little Douglas Squirrel is our native squirrel in this area, and just recently we seem to have been invaded by the introduced species – the ‘Gray’ Squirrel (even though the ones hanging about here are black in colour)….but there is another native squirrel that up to a couple of years ago, I’d never seen….the reason being….they are nocturnal…that being the ‘Flying Squirrel’

I took these pictures last night in my yard.  We have a tube feeder of black oil sunflower seeds which hangs just outside of our living room window…

and that feeder is visited regularly by Flying Squirrels.  These little guys have become so tame that we can walk up to within a few feet of them and they just continue on with their meal….

I hesitate to take too many pictures of them, because, of course I have to use a flash and I don’t want to cause damage to their eyes.  Flying squirrels don’t actually ‘fly’ – they glide, using the flag of skin that you can see extends from their front legs to their hind legs.  They are also extremely adept at hanging upside down on tree trunks as they always arrive, head first down the tree trunk.