The Something Wild team recently posed a riddle: What flies but is not a bird? What is a forest health indicator, but is not a tree?
Need a clue? It is arboreal, which means it lives almost entirely in trees. It is nocturnal but it’s not a bat.
It’s a flying squirrel, and New Hampshire is fortunate enough to have two different species in the state.
The Northern Flying Squirrel lives mostly in the White Mountains. It has cinnamon-brown fur and loves cold, coniferous forests where it can find the fungi associated with pine trees that it relies on for food.
The Northern Flying Squirrel is slightly larger than its cousin, the Southern Flying Squirrel. As evidenced by its name, it lives in the southern part of the state, and has grayish-brown fur. It prefers deciduous, leafy forests for its habitat.
Both species are tiny: they weigh less than a half-pound, around 2-4 ounces, the size of a chipmunk. Compare that to the common Gray Squirrel; they weigh over one pound.
Flying squirrels don’t actually “fly,” they glide from branch to branch with help from the specialized skin membrane called the patagium, which stretches between their wrists and ankles, and acts as a living parachute.
But they don’t glide like a paper airplane. They actively modify the wing membrane to maneuver through the forest. They can steer, create lift, bank, turn corners, and dodge obstacles in the forest canopy. This allows them to avoid predators like owls. They can even glide while carrying things like small pinecones.
They are nocturnal creatures, and their long whiskers and big black eyes help them take advantage of starlight and moonlight to safely access food. Something Wild host Grace McCulloch says It also gives them a distinctively cute appearance, like little gliding lemurs.
Being nocturnal also allows them to evade predators like hawks, and to avoid direct competition with gray squirrels, who are bold backyard inhabitants during the day.
They eat fungi, insects, bird eggs, and even carrion. Southern flying squirrel populations are influenced by oak acorn abundance, the seasonal mast crop cycles.
They eat nuts in a specific, unusual way: chewing into the nut in a circular fashion like rotating an ear of corn, as opposed to chewing open at the seams, like gray squirrels do. This leaves ragged, irregularly shaped openings and jagged shell fragments.
You might see them at your bird feeder at night. Something Wild host Dave Anderson says you can actually hear them at night rustling in the canopy of oak forests when acorns are available, particularly when sweet-tasting white oak acorns ripen.
If you think you might have flying squirrels on your property, you can become a part of the New England Flying Squirrel Network and contribute to their research. You just need a few trees on your property and a nest box (bought or made yourself) which you check once per month to photograph the contents.
As a critical part of the prey base for nocturnal predators, flying squirrels serve as forest health indicators. But they have not been thoroughly studied as far as the impact of climate change or with increased exposure to humans.
Something Wild is a partnership of NH Audubon, the Forest Society, and NHPR.
