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Flying Squirrels at feeders in VA
Photos by John C., 2003 in Arlington, VA.

Shown are 2 Flying Squirrels at the feeders at Long Branch Nature Center. The center is a 5-10 minute drive from Washington, DC. The impatient "Flyers" began descending the tree even before their food was placed on their nest boxes or eating station boxes. An audience turnout of about 25 watched these Flyers eat after 6:30 PM. While the audience was moving, shining flashlights, snapping photos, and listening to the park naturalist's engaging presentation; the Flyers continued with their feeding frenzy, which eventually wound down after about an hour. Often the Flyers were just 3 feet away from us.

In order to carry the larger unwieldy nuts just after selecting them, the Flyers quickly nibbled a small hole in the nuts for their teeth to sink into and hook around. Then they immediately scurried up the tree to eat or hide them where no one could see. Without nibbling a "tooth-hold" hole, they could easily drop the cumbersome nuts. A few of the nuts were dropped.

Sometimes you could clearly see 6-7 Flyers at a time while others occasionally glided and chirped in the near background. For the more noticeable longer glides, the crowd "oohed" or gasped in unison much as you might expect a crowd to react in response to daring circus stunts. The park naturalist said that sometimes a Flyer will glide away from a tree, change its mind, make a 180º mid-air turn, and glide back to the tree from which it departed. Unfortunately, we were not able to see such an example on that specific outing. I estimated that a few of the Flyers' glides that we all witnessed that night were as far as 75-100 feet.