Flying Squirrels

DMills

DMills

Location
Ky
Check out the squirrel in these pics. We removed a 90' White Pine tree with decay and multiple stress fractures in the trunk yesterday. Didn't notice him when I was taking the pics, but hit the ground running from 85-90'. Tough little guys!
 

Attachments

  • 267863-IMG_1126_3.webp
    267863-IMG_1126_3.webp
    28.5 KB · Views: 199
Had the same thing happen, in a white pine too for that matter. One parent and 5 babies who didn't even have there eyes open yet. Blew the top at 60 feet and they went with it. I gathered the babies and put them in a cardboard box and set it next to another pine that the parent ran up. The mom/dad carried them up the tree one by one. Hope they made it ok. Crazy little buggers.
 
i think he knows it wasn't a true flying squirel, but it kinda was that day.
grin.gif
 
I've heard them called sugar gliders too. They really don't fly they just glide from tree to tree. Hard to tell looking at the pics but the short tail looks like a flying squirrel. You almost need something to scale it against, flying squirrels are a lot smaller than "normal" squirrels.
 
just to be clear what we are saying, i'm pretty sure the squirel in the pictures is just a regular squirel, like a grey squirel that can not glide away.

I flying squirel, sometimes southern people call them sugar gliders, have noticable skin flap between front legs and back legs and can glide away considerably. Much smaller animal, and look "cute" with the big black nocturnal eyes. A true flying squirel would not fall straight down like that and you would have seen the skin stretched out.

grey squirels that can't glide, can slow themselves down a good bit by stretching out though. I've seen a few drop fairly slow. But are very tough, can take a big fall.
 
Funny pictures! I've seen some squirrels hit the ground running before. They are pretty tough. I had an angry squirrel run down my back while pruning a Maple one time.
One winter I was dropping an old dead trunk. It was about 30ft tall and when it hit the ground, this big fat sleepy raccoon came scurrying out and ran into the nearby bushes.
 
You know? The first time I saw a "regular" squirrel bail out, I was very surprized to indeed see a flap of skin between the fore and aft legs that DID facilitate a slight glide ratio. I've seen it many times in Michigan. Then in Indiana I saw a "real" flying squirrel and saw that they are much smaller and have a much better glide ratio. Now here's something we hope you'll REALLY like...
 
that's cool. I wonder how many squirrel species there are in the US, your regular squirrel might have more skin than ours.

i can think of four types right now in our small state.

flying squirrel

grey squirel

little red squirrel

black squirrel

delmarva fox squirrel -huge.
 
I've ran into flying squirrels two times. Apparently they aren't uncommon but more are nocturnal so they're not seen so much. Unless you cut their home down. This little guy glided downhill from the tree I was in (popped out a a hole about 10" from my nose, almost needed fresh pants) about 100'. HIs friend went the other way. I don't think they appreciate being woken up or forcibly relocated.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom