In June, a few coyote watchers and I had the joy of watching two Southern Flying Squirrels. The glimpses were fleeting. They were only for a few minutes, late in the evening, when a squirrel would come down to get acorns. But it was such a pleasure to study a new species in Central Park. We tried to keep track of the two but as the summer went on it became almost impossible to find them again.

So recently, it has been wonderful that I am now seeing them again, in a variety of locations. I don’t know if it’s that with the leaves falling they are more visible, or that they are being more active as they prepare for the winter, or some combination of the two.

Regardless of why I’m seeing them more often, unlike the summer when we were primarily seeing them run down a tree trunk to gather food, I’m now seeing them make many flights.

The images below were taken with a thermal camera. White is hot, and black is cold. The squirrels show up as white.