A Nightly Visitor

For the longest time, I wondered what was eating leftover sunflower seeds in our feeder at night, leaving behind a neat little pile of husks and a cleared area around where it sat. Well, this is the little culprit ! It's a Northern Flying Squirrel. Not many people have ever heard of them and fewer have ever seen them. They are completely nocturnal and feed on a variety of seeds, nuts, insects and bird eggs. While they are called Flying Squirrels, they actually glide. There's a loose fold of skin that runs from behind the front leg to in front of the rear leg, on each side of the body. They travel from tree to tree (or tree to feeder) by extending all four legs when they jump out of a tree and gliding to their target. And they actually glide quite well and for quite a distance. Each night, we put about one cup of black-oil sunflower seeds out for the pair of flying squirrels and most of it is gone by morning ! You'll note from the bolts in the roof of the feeder and the wires just visible running from the sides at the top, that this is a squirrel-proof feeder .....