Ausgust 1st -- Flying Squirrel Day!

Today Lon and I went to the Canaan Loop Road sites.  We were slightly fearful because the clouds were looking very dark and like they were about to shower us with rain at any moment.  With that thought in the back of our minds we made quick work of the hair snare sites!

There wasn't much activity at the Big Rock site, but we did find a salamander!  At first I was all excited because I thought it was a cheat mountain salamander -- a rare, threatened species of salamander, endemic to West Virginia!  They are neat too in the fact that the female will actually stick around to guard her eggs!  Most species of salamander won't do that.  But, after some more investigation, I realized it was just another Allegheny Mountain Dusky...I seem to be finding a lot of those.  I would love to see a marbled salamander!

Anyway, we moved onto Flag Run and we had a few snares that had been triggered, but not a lot of hair.  I pulled the SD card on the camera even though the snare wasn't triggered, because the bait was gone so I wanted to see if I could figure this crisis out -- I think it's just mice again...UGH!!!

Back at the office I put the SD card in the computer and started flipping through the pictures and what should I find a picture of???  A FLYING SQUIRREL!!!!  Oh, my gosh I was so EXCITED!  I wasn't sure if it was a northern or a southern so I e-mailed the pictures to our 2 flying squirrel experts Dr. Flaherty & Dr. Smith, and Dr. Smith really believes it is a northern based on the size relative to the hair snare!  We found Ginny!  The only part of this that stinks is that it didn't go in the hair snare so no hair was collected, but now I know there is at least one there so hopefully it will revisit the snare!

GREAT DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Salamander

Flying squirrel!!

 Avoiding the snare and going up the tree!