Flying Squirrel 



3. Labrador Red Squirrel. S. hudsonicus (Erxleben). Red 

 colour in winter paler, fringe on tail yellowish or gray, 

 lower parts decidedly gray. 



Range. Labrador and Hudson Bay region to Alaska. 

 Numerous red squirrels inhabit the Western States, those 

 on the North West coast being quite brown in color. 



Flying Squirrel 



Sciuropterus volans (Linnaeus) 



Length. 9.40 inches. 



Description. Fur soft, dense and mole-like; skin of the sides 

 produced and susceptible of being spread out when the legs 

 are extended, so as to form a sort of parachute. Drab above, 

 irregularly tinged with russet, slightly brighter in summer; 

 under parts pure white to the roots of the hair. 



Range. Northern New York and Southern New England to 

 Georgia and west to the plains. A slightly different variety 

 replaces this in Florida, while in the Northern part of its 

 range there occurs a much larger, quite different species. 

 (See below.) 



Flying squirrels are so persistently nocturnal that it is ex- 

 tremely difficult to learn much about their habits. Yet they are 

 such beautiful, gentle, dreamy-eyed little forest folk, that one can- 

 not help wishing to know more about them. What do they do 

 with themselves in the quiet woods all night long, pattering 

 about among the leaves ? 



If you watch with exceeding patience, you may see them in 

 the dim light sailing from one tree to the next, but life is hardly 

 long enough to learn much about them in this manner. 



When you have found a flying-squirrel tree it is easy 

 enough to rap on the bark with a stick and rout them out 

 into daylight, and make them show off their power of flying to 

 your satisfaction; but that will be about all you will get out of 

 them at such times. 



I have made them come out on dark cloudy days and 

 watched them patiently, but their patience far exceeded mine; in 

 fact, I am not quite sure that they did not even go to sleep clinging 

 there against the bark, like lichens, which they so much resem- 

 bled as to suggest that their clouded cream buff colouring might 



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