Ready to take another stroll through time, enjoying all of the adorable scenery along the way? Here’s another fascinating pictorial featuring another of my local park squirrel watching excursions! My sixth trip took place on Friday January 29, 2016… the only time I braved the cold for a squirrel trip between December and February! The temperature was actually pretty reasonable on this day… probably in the 40’s already, which is a heat wave in January. My first photo once again makes for an excellent title card!
Along with being my only winter trip, this particular journey was also unique in that it was largely dominated by the antics of a single squirrel! We’ll see him soon enough, but let’s see what I saw a bit earlier in the morning…
Wow, buddy! Aren’t you cold with no fur?
Thanks for asking, pal, but I’m fine. My nuts are plenty warm…
One of the biggest advantages of the cold season is that with the leaves all gone from the trees, the squirrels can no longer hide from me! This upside down critter might have been missed completely had it been July…
This is one of my better squirrel-jumping-in-a-tree shots. Don’t worry, it’s only about 50 or so feet above the ground…
Here’s a kinda-squirrel-jumping-in-a-tree photo. And there’s no way we’re seeing this guy either if it weren’t winter…
What better place for a squirrel to enjoy a meal than on top of a tree stump? Nature’s patio tables…
Just make sure you clean up your mess before you leave. You hear me?
The star of the show was this guy, who was busy building a nest in that evergreen tree… and apparently didn’t care that I was following him around capturing every moment!
On the ground, he kept going from leafpile to leafpile, picking up an armload of leaves and swishing them up and down with his arms, making a crinkling sound that made him immediately noticeable to anyone!
I dubbed him Wilson after the name of our park, and dedicated all four Saturday Squirrel features in February 2016 to my time with him. I literally watched and photographed him for over half an hour!!!
Ain’t I just fucking adorable?
Here you can get a good look at the sore Wilson had over his left eye, which caused him to squint a bit and made him look a bit curmudgeonly in appearance…
One of these days, they’re gonna build a statue of me in this park.
My absolute favorite Wilson photo, and one I put in my Top 10 of all photos I’d ever taken a couple years ago! Is there anything cuter than a squirrel holding a bunch of leaves in the middle of a leafpile?
Time to get a fresh load…
Taking time to enjoy the walk…
Making a dash for it! Look up in my blog’s banner. See that squirrel running? Yes, that’s this image of Wilson!
You said a mouthful…
Crinkle! Crinkle! Crinkle!
Man, how am I supposed to compete with that?
I took a little break from Wilson to get a few more pics of the other squirrels in the park that day…
Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s…
OK, it actually was a plane. And another opportunity lost had there been leaves in the trees!
Looks like Wilson’s still at it!
‘Bout time you came back!
Yeah, sure. Like you really need an audience to build a nest…
Time to dump another load!
That’s a pretty big nest for one squirrel! But I guess if you have an excess of dead leaves…
I’ll just take a bow now…
You do that, Wilson. Thanks for entertaining me on a winter’s day, as well as my entire audience! It should be a bit warmer for our next trip…. be sure to tune in again next Tuesday!
I too love watching them gather leaves for nest building. They really do WORK SO HARD – but then they play hard too. Was sitting on my front porch enjoying the cool early morning air and saw a “parade” of five squirrels scamper across the driveway from neighbor’s yard to ours. In a straight line……it was pretty cool – of course I NEVER have a camera handy for that kind of stuff!
Pam
You will have to take your camera out to the porch one time and get some pictures to show off! Just don’t post them near Tuesday, because I wouldn’t want a certain cafeteria worker to get any new recipe ideas…
This guy was working so hard that he didn’t even pay much attention to me! I’ve never had a squirrel cooperate with me anywhere near as long as Wilson did… at least while I was outside with them and not taking pictures from inside.
So adorable!
Yes they are!
Those squirrels look very well fed!
The park is full of nuts! And I’m not talking about the people…
This is a great batch…. nest building, leaf gathering and squirrel aerobics. Love it!
It’s never boring. There’s probably not much of anything I haven’t caught the squirrels doing at the park yet….
You’d better be careful with Wilson, he’s talking to the other squirrels about the dude with the camera, they’ve named you Squirrley Paparazzi. So be careful you don’t get a squirrel fist in the face, just sayin’….lol
They already throw things at me! The trees are full of ninja assassin squirrels!
I love seeing them going the tree trunk head first. Looks very precarious!
If it wasn’t precarious, it’d be too boring for a squirrel…
Thank you for this lovely post of Wilson building a nest. I think this is the best squirrel post I have ever seen.
It was definitely one of my more enjoyable squirrel watching experiences. I’m glad Wilson let me capture him hard at work…
That’s a lot of leaves for one squirrel to manage. Wilson was, perhaps still is, an expert interior designer, fussy about having just the right leaf.
He definitely had a better selection of materials to work with than you’d find at any home improvement store. They all just look like dead leaves to me, but I guess if I were making a home out of them, I’d want only the very best dead leaves as well…
All terrific and in many cases, quite athletic poses…but that park bistro shot (aka tree trunk patio table) was my favorite!
It was very thoughtful to leave those stumps as tables for the squirrels rather than dig them up and call them an eyesore. Nothing that has a squirrel sitting on it can ever be an eyesore…
I hope to see cutlery and cloth napkins next time. 😆