Labour day weekend has finished and the Visitor Centre echoes faintly with the questions and queries from the visitors of the 2011 summer season. It was a great summer season that included everything from developing new display tanks for our resident animals, to watching turtle hatchlings take their first looks at the world around them. All of this wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and goodwill of a lot of great people. The summer staff was an amazing group to work with – each one contributed to our success. Thank you to Breanne for her hard work setting up our Amazing Race, to Lauren for her efficient manner in making sure all our natural props were organized and easily accessible, to Caitlin for her enthusiasm and willingness to help everyone out, to Emily for the new character scripts she wrote for next year’s Spirit Fire, to Brady for tirelessly removing non-native species and monitoring endangered species, and to Trena for designing a building a new children’s display for the 2012 season. These are just a few of the things that this amazing group of students accomplished this summer, to list them all would take more space than I have. Their hard work, enthusiasm and passion for nature made my job easy and very enjoyable this summer. I was sad to see them all leave and I wish them all the best at school.
- 2011 Naturalist Staff
One thing we’ve been trying to do all summer is get good photos of a rarely seen creature here at Rondeau. One of the reasons that it is so rarely seen is because it is nocturnal. Being the crafty naturalists that we are, we set up a motion sensitive nighttime critter camera early this summer and put out some food in the hopes of attracting this diminutive animal. With excitement we went out to check the first photos – great was our disappointment when all we got was pictures of Raccoons feeding on the bait.
The next time we checked we had an image of a deer walking by in the background. Both were neat photos, but we were looking for our elusive tree dwelling mammal, not raccoons or deer. Disappointed, yet not dissuaded, we kept at it and ended up with a lovely set of pictures of tree branches blowing in the wind, a blue jay, and more raccoons. Eventually, and fairly recently, we got what we were looking for – the elusive tree-dweller can be seen plainly in the photo below.
What, you didn’t recognize it? It is that white spot above and a little to the left of centre. If you haven’t guessed yet, that is one of our Southern Flying Squirrels (we know this for sure because the image comes from a video of the squirrel gliding down to the feeding platform!). The Southern Flying Squirrel is the smallest of the squirrels at Rondeau. Surprisingly to most they are quite omnivorous eating not only nuts, berries and fungi but also bird eggs, nestlings, young mice, voles, and even carrion!
- Southern Flying Squirrel
The name flying squirrel is a bit of a misnomer; gliding squirrel would be more accurate. Flying squirrels have a loose flap of skin that extends from their front leg to their back leg on each side. When they jump off a branch they spread out their legs which stretches out this flap of skin and turns them into mini gliding carpets. While airborne they can steer themselves by loosening the flap of skin on one side and changing the position of their tail. To land, they lower their flattened tail which acts as an air brake, then pull up with their front legs and land lightly on their target tree.
- Airborne Southern Flying Squirrel
The distance a flying squirrel can glide is directly related to its height on a tree at the beginning of a glide. Impressively, for every 1m of height a flying squirrel has it can travel a distance of 3m. That means that a Southern Flying Squirrel that jumps from a 20m high branch can glide 60m before landing on the ground! Scientists have also discovered that flying squirrels use “air highways”: by jumping off of certain launch pads they can arrive at specific destinations. The squirrels mark these launch pads by urinating on them.
If you have any questions about our upcoming events, Southern Flying Squirrels or anything else nature related please email them to me at kipling.campbell@ontario.ca
Glidingly Yours
Kipling