Life throws us change every day.
I have mapped out a plan of blog posts. The second post of each month is scheduled to be about my work-in-progress.
And then this happened…
Embracing Change
A change of plans; I am working on a project based upon monthly walks at Oswegatchie Hills Nature Preserve in Niantic, CT. I will be announcing the project very soon. I had planned on waiting until the end of the month for my walk but embraced change and decided to go on Monday, July 11, 2016 as the forecast was predicting warmer, more humid weather coming our way. I walked for only a few minutes before I spotted a red-bellied woodpecker working very diligently on what seemed to be a new hole in a tree filled with several different holes of various sizes.
An Encounter to Remember
As I was photographing him, I see through the camera lens a flying squirrel going after the woodpecker! Not only is the first time I can remember seeing a flying squirrel in addition to the first time photographing one; but I can honestly say I have never seen an attacking flying squirrel!
The squirrel thought it had won but the woodpecker came back for a sneak attack.
I saw the squirrel sail away in my peripheral vision with the woodpecker hot on its tail.
I managed to catch the squirrel remaining still as a stone on a nearby tree before the woodpecker came at it again and it ran/sailed off.
I hung around for about 30 minutes after the woodpecker left to see if the squirrel returned, wondering if it had been defending babies, and vice versa. But alas, no more action. Woodpecker 1, flying squirrel 0. You just gotta love nature!
Oh by the way – I am at the very beginning of several projects so I really didn’t have much to show in the way of works in progress. Monday’s score: Nature – 1, Kelly’s studio – 0. Change is good – back to the studio I go.
Great sequence and story. Though I have hiked Oswegatchie Hills for years, I have never seen a flying squirrel there
David, I grew up on the edge of the Meshomasic State Forest in South Glastonbury where we saw bears before anyone else was talking about them in CT, listened to whip poor wills call all summer night long, my Dad saw a mountain lion in the forest, our horse probably met up with same lion one night, and my mother was startled by a moose on our long driveway one morning walk. (It was later seen crossing the CT river over to Rocky Hill, where the DEP promptly tranquilized it but didn’t account for how exhausted it was, it died). That was all in the late 60’s and 70’s. But I had never seen a flying squirrel. Even in all of my hiking as an adult. What a treat it was!