We never see what they do when they’re in the trees, but three of them (probably a family) are snoozing on my windowsill in a big furry pile. It’s a perfect day for that, sunny and slightly cool.
The secret life of squirrels
June 14, 2011 • 11:13 am
This is the same window you take those skyline shots from?
Do you give them a peanut? I have several squirrelies that will eat out of my hand. I also still owe Diane G. a video of Merlyn chasing poor Ratso around in our back yard. Production delayed by a combination of weather and travel.
They look tasty.
This just in: A squirrel oddity (A poor pun on the film) 🙂
Cute! Esp. the music. I wonder if that squirrel wasn’t just enjoying the ride, as I know they’re perfectly happy to just hang upside down when hungry:
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/3883/dsc03119irf1024.jpg
Tho it may be a tad exhausting:
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/3109/dsc03126irf1024.jpg
Very funny that exhausted squirrel pic ! Also I had no idea these creatures were available in black
They are a melanistic form in the midwest I think & on the rise in the UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11444893
Oh, thanks Dom! Didn’t see your post before my comment below. Interesting article!
Here I don’t observe the black morph being any more or less dominant. The fox squirrels, when present, seem to have a slight advantage (rule of tonnage?), but the feisty little red squirrels reign over the grays at feeders in the summers, even though they look about half as large, if that.
Yep, they’re a fairly common morph of our “gray squirrel,” Sciurus carolinensis, around here–SW Michigan–and in many places around the NE US as well, I believe. Not sure about other places.
Gray gray squirrel, fox squirrel, black gray squirrel:
http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/6559/dsc08852irfaac1024.jpg
We’ve got ’em here in SE Pennsylvania. There is a population of them centered on my son’s house, that has held constant at about 10% for at least 30 years (it used to be my mom’s house).
I never see them elsewhere around town, though, just on this one block with a lot of big beech trees.
Never seen a black one in NC, probably not great in our hot sunny weather.
Black form makes more sense in a dense woodland or further north perhaps?
hmmm…
Well, as you would imagine, Wikipedia has something to say about it…your reasons are touched on as is a sort of parallel to industrial melanism, only in this case it’s deforestation demelanism…Interestingly, it seems they’ve also been introduced all over:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Squirrels
Awww.. so cute! I get to see one outside my window on my suet cage.
Er, recall the Zuk post chaps & be careful how you comment, lest you make them sound too human-like!
😉
Hang on – Secret Squirrel was one of my favourite cartoons in the 60s! We didn’t have a telly until about 1965/6…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Squirrel
I am quite unrepentant! 😉
Squirrel cam needed!
What a privilege to witness that! I, too, would like to know more about said window and the habitat beyond.
Seconded!
They are so cute. I like squirrels, even though they make feeding the birds difficult. They visit my back yard regularly for water from the birdbath, especially since we’ve had minimal rain for weeks.
Do squirrels get into roofs as possums do? If it were legal I’d build myself a verandah, buy a rocking chair and a shotgun and sit out of a summer evening taking potshots at the little buggers! That’d learn them!
Stanford University has black squirrels also (apparently black Eastern Grey Squirrels)
Squirrel: an animal well suited to launchin’