Siberian flying squirrel -- web camera site

[Paivi T Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Paivi T]

Here's another online camera installation site, for another extremely rare creature, the Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans). It's a protected species, very rare and nocturnal to boot, so the chances to ever see one are very, very low. Here you can observe a nesting squirrel and its young live:

http://www.ponttokamera.net/ > Liito-oravan pönttö

Päivi T

[sune Registered Find all posts View Profile Close sune]

There is some dispute about how rare the flying squirrel actually is. Expert's estimates vary from 15 000 to 50 000 specimens i Finland. In Russia it is not rare, so it can't be considered a endangered species. The estimates vary so much because the flying squirrel is a night animal and it is hard to catch sight of it. The researchers try to conclude the amount of squirrels by counting the findings of leavings beneath the nest trees.

When I was a child we had flying squirrels nesting between the roof and the ceiling of our summer house. They slept all day and had fun at night. They went sliding down the ceiling of the curb roofed house, all night. Swooosh, bump, swoosh bump they went when we tried to sleep in the attic. When you pounded the fist against the ceiling they were quiet for a few minutes and then they started all over.

Once, I must have been 8 or 9 years old, there sat a baby flyning squirrel on the porch. I took in my hand. Fast as lightning it turned it's head 180 degrees and bit me in the fold of my thumb. When I opened my fist it didn't let go but hang there for a while from it's teeth. It took much shaking of the hand before the squirrel let go. I still have a visible scar in the place where it bit me.

In the early 1960ies we tore down the old house, because it would have fallen by it self otherwise and we had a new house built on the same lot. But the flying squirrels vanished and never came back.

Sune