Image: Sue Cameron installs a new squirrel box (8554236001)

Description: The Carolina northern flying squirrel is a cold-weather animal descendent from the northern flying squirrels pushed south by the ice sheets that covered northern latitudes during the last ice age. When the ice sheets receded, some of these squirrels found refuge on the tops of our highest mountains. Over the millennia, these squirrels differentiated from their northern cousins and today are a subspecies found only in the Southern Appalachians where northern hardwood forests give way to spruce-fir forests. One of the main ways biologists track populations of these squirrels is to provide nesting boxes, mounted high in trees, which are periodically checked to see if they’re occupied. If Carolina northern-flying squirrels are found using the boxes, those individuals are tagged, weighed and measured. On this day, the Service’s Sue Cameron joined Dottie Brown of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission to check a series of boxes off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Unfortunately no squirrels were found on this snowy day, but the trip provided the biologists an opportunity to replace degraded nest boxes.
Title: Sue Cameron installs a new squirrel box (8554236001)
Credit: Sue Cameron installs a new squirrel box Uploaded by AlbertHerring
Author: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No