The Mike Tyson of squirrels.
After almost 8 and a half years of blogging and over 2400 posts… just what is The Nest’s 
most popular post of all time? Fittingly, it’s a Saturday Squirrel post from August 16, 2014 titled “Grey Squirrels At Night,” which introduced my readers to a word even I had not heard of before…. crepuscular. Crepuscular animals can be either diurnal or nocturnal…. but their defining trait is that they’re most active in the hours around twilight, just before dawn and after sunset. Squirrels, during the summer months especially, are very crepuscular in their behavior.
At some point about a year after I first posted it, Google was spitting out my post very high in the results whenever someone would search for whether squirrels were diurnal or nocturnal…. and the stats for that post exploded!
I’m all popular and shit! Well, I was three years ago….
6,712 views and counting for an accidentally informative post that was inspired by one particular Friday morning in October 2013 when the conditions were perfect to give me naturally silhouetted shots of my backyard squirrels!
Leave me alone, Ralph! I don’t swing that way!
And that opportunity was made all the better by the fact that these two squirrels were chasing each other all over the place! I got quite a few images of these shadow squirrels…
Ninja squirrel lurks in the shadows.
Squirrels playing in the shadows…
It may be a leaf, but it looks like the standing squirrel is holding his paw out like a wizard casting a spell on the poor squirrel wrapped around the tree.
Look above the white breast fur, and you can barely make out one evil looking face! Evil, but still adorable!
Who knew weirdly random low angle sunlight conditions could turn into a learning moment for so many people all over the world who helped make Grey Squirrels At Night the most famous post on my blog? Saturday Squirrels are both cute and educational…
Have a great weekend everyone!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Pretty cool photos and that random light from the sun hitting the pines – adds an “artsy” touch!
Pam
They came out pretty neat… and I think this was an instance where it helped that I didn’t have my current camera at the time. The crappy camera helped keep the squirrels in the daytime shadows!
They are cute in shadow OR in light…..too bad we can’t say that about a lot of humans!! (haha)
These silhouettes with blue sky behind are amazing.
Great weekend to you, too.
Yes, it’s a very weird effect. I think my tree in the front yard was shading the sun since it was still low…
Love these! And apparently 6700 odd people agree.
😊
Half of those 6700 odd people probably left some of that weird spam while looking at them….
Beautiful photos. Another reason to love squirrels.
Yes, they look cute even when you can’t see their faces…
Wow! Congrats on all the hits!
Thanks! And it beats the story behind my second most popular post (6100+ hits), which is almost entirely due to a photo I included of a fat naked guy at a computer!
Reminds me of a Stephen King illustrated novel. Your stats are the envy of the crepuscular world.
I’d like to see Cujo try to catch a squirrel….
Presumably these Twilight squirrels glitter in the daylight, drink blood and have unlikely high school romances…
Nah, because unlike those sissy vampires, squirrels are still popular!
This post was life changing for me! I had never encountered the word crepuscular before but, after learning about it, I realized that I am crepuscular. I’ve always hated afternoons when the sun is high and bright and going out during the afternoon has always made me feel really anxious and irritable. Now I stay in sync with the squirrels and bunnies and lay low during the ugly, bright, hot afternoons and I am much happier!
I like low light times as well! This time of year, the sun is rising as I’m taking my 5 AM break, and I can watch it get lighter and lighter on the patio. And as much as I despise Daylight Savings Time, it would be very weird to go out at 5 in the morning and see the sun already up and bright…
I think we’re unusual for liking low light times. Most people I’ve talked to seem to love it when it’s light 16+ hours a day.
It’s always great to have that one post that makes you famous–and this is an excellent one!
It was fun while it lasted, but Google appears to have dropped me out of their crepuscular cache! I missed my opportunity to monetize my blog and make millions!
We used to get the early morning and just before dark squirrels until something happened and all of a sudden, they came in mid-morning and never left. I don’t mean a squirrel or two. I mean a phalanx. A corps de squirrels. A platoon. What happened to crepuscular? Is this a personal thing?
Squirrel activity can be weird and uneven. When I go to the park, there will always be one section where the squirrels are all over the place and very active, and then spots where you cant’ spot one at all. And the active areas will change while I’m still there…