Chippy

It's been fun to watch the squirrels running around my parents' yard, jumping from branch to branch and engaging in acrobatics to reach the bird feeders. We don't have diurnal squirrels on San Juan Island. Other islands like Orcas do, but on San Juan we just have the nocturnal flying squirrel, which I've sadly never seen. Because of this,I've stopped taking them for granted. I didn't spend any time photographing the squirrels on this trip, but recent encounters reminded me of these photos of a very cooperative chipmunk from back in April. I was down at Tualatin National Wildlife Refuge and this little guy was more interested than eating the spring leaves than worrying about my presence.

Tomorrow I'll be heading back to the San Juans, so updates on island wildlife will be forthcoming, I'm sure. I'm participating in the Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, and will definitley post some sightings from that.