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Flying Squirrel house #5  (it's really just a food cache)
Photos by John C., 2002 in Dickerson, MD.

ABOVE: 12/7/2002 photo of Flying Squirrel house #5, which is a really a food cache. It was designed as a Northern Flicker Woodpecker or Red-headed Woodpecker nest box but only Flying Squirrels have used it. The entrance is 10-11' high. The box has been up for over a year. Today I noticed fine bark strands (they looked like fine dried grass) on the snow under the box. This seemed to me like a sign of Flying Squirrel activity, so I setup a ladder and looked inside of the box. There was a 1" layer of these strands inside, under which there were about 6" of acorns. There was no evidence of anything living in the box: No passages to a sleeping area could be seen in the acorns. My guess is that a woodpecker entered the box and threw out some of the Flying Squirrel nesting material. There were no footprints in the snow below the box. Results of apparent Woodpecker damage around the 2" wide entrance is shown. The pecking damage was not there 2 months earlier in October. My experience is that Woodpeckers often peck more on the top left side of entrance holes holes like this shows.

LEFT: In response to the combined Woodpecker and Flying Squirrel usage, a Flying Squirrel home was added on Dec 14. The contents of the squirrel cache were moved to this new box. The northwest side vents of each box were blocked for the winter to keep them from being chilled by the cold winds. The entrance of the Woodpecker home was bored out from 2" wide to 2 1/2" wide to accommodate Red-bellied woodpeckers which are using nearby Bluebird box #3. A Bat house shares the same post with this box pair. As of Jan 12, 2003, the only obvious activity has been in the Woodpecker box...some of the wood chips were moved.

Monitoring notes:
4/12/03 Hollow nut shells in food cache. Cedar strips in woodpecker box.
6/20/03 Hollow nut shells in food cache every 2 weeks since 4/12, except for 6/8.
9/12/03 Hollow nut shells in food cache every week since 6/20, whole peanuts were
    added on 8/31 because the nuts were running out. They are being eaten now too.