Daily Updates
Snow, Spot, and a Narrow Escape - UPDATE January 30, 2021
30 January 2021
Print Email
Chickadee in snow
Chickadee in snow
On this day of falling snow, I sat at my desk between periods of rest that I still need as I recover. Out the window, birds and red squirrels made their usual visits that usually don?t distract me. Then a mink appeared, which always stirs me to action. I quickly rose to crank open the window and offer bologna, trying to see who it was. It was Spot who we haven?t seen for about a month. I didn?t get a picture for the record, though, because Spot was satisfied with a dead mouse we?d put out. She took it off into the forest in a direction we have not seen Guitar go.
I wondered if Spot dared to visit because the larger Guitar was peacefully ensconced in his or her lair in the roof with a good cache of bologna. The main evidence of Guitar?s presence is a growing pile of scat outside the hole in the roof soffit.
The next distraction was at 7:20 PM when light streaks of incoming flying squirrels appeared against the blackness beyond. Shortly they were on the railing. Then I saw why their main attention is always toward the darkness rather than to sounds and movement of me inside the nearby lighted window. A barred owl silently swooped out of the darkness and nearly caught one. I didn?t see a squirrel for the next 38 minutes, and then only briefly.
The main motion is a half dozen deer eating alfalfa hay in the yard.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
