Meet Rocky the Flying Squirrel

Rocky is actually mostly unidentifiable from as many as seven Northern Flying Squirrels I've seen in my trees near my squirrel feeders.  Here in Wisconsin we are in the southern range of the Northern Flyer. 

Flying Squirrels don't actually fly, but glide on 'patagium', flaps of skin that extend between the front and back legs.  They control their flight using mostly their 'wrists' to control the taughtness of the patagium.  In this view you can see the dark line that is formed by the folding of the patagium.  Their tails are also somewhat flat and assist in steering and gliding.  The single most impressive act is to see one go from a fast glide to a fast brake.  When they 'brake' they usually go into a slight upward 'swoop' to land smoothly on a tree.

They might be a bit bigger than a 'chipmunk' or 'groundsquirrel' that are plentiful around here.  They are nocturnal, only seen at night.  Notice the huge eyes used for night vision.  It was my dog that directed my attention to them.  From there, I was hooked.

This segues into another interest of mine, technical photography.  I say 'technical' because I don't have the artistic talent necessary to make a really serious hobby of photography.  I do, however, have an excellent understanding of the technical aspects of how a camera works, such as how focal length, depth of field, lens aperture, and exposure relate to each other.

This photo was taken with a Nikon CoolPix 5700 digital camera with on camera flash.  With this camera, this was a lucky shot in the dark. 

Here's Rocky taken with a full manual film camera and off-camera flash.  Notice there's no 'red eye'.  There is a lot of noise in the dark part of the picture.  I think that's an issue with scanning the negative into digital format.  I really, really like film. 

This picture was also made with a manual camera and flash.  It's a bit out of focus, as it's kind of hard to focus a manual camera in the dark, but it shows the patagium spread out and the manner in which I keep them coming around!  I should go through my pictures and find one with a squirrel flat on the tree hiding.  They just flatten out against the tree and just about disappear.