Sunday, October 23, 2011

Your Sunday Squirrel


I've been cooped up all day writing music and such, so by around 5:00, I really had to take a walk. As I'm wrestling with a few nagging musical problems who comes my way but a squirrel. At 2nd & Vine. How unexpected. Carrying a very large acorn in his mouth, he scurries past as some phone zombie nearly steps on him. Of course, he climbs a tree. And of course, I take his picture. In this shot, he's upside down and in profile. After that, he hops around the corner, off to other adventures. I hope he gets back safely to his home tree with his large acorn.

Here is another shot of the friendly guy from a few weeks ago. I hope I run into him again sometime soon.

Oh, and I made a wonderful, accidental discovery this week. I stumbled onto the Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology the other day. I like birdsong. I live in the middle of a city. Songbirds avoid urban centers like the plague. But I still like birdsong. Anyhow, little did I know that Cornell has a massive archive of animal audio and video. Of course, I typed in "squirrel" and got a zillion results. Did you know that there's a squirrelfish? It doesn't look anything like a tree rodent. But that's what you find out when you're being non-specific. As I went down the list, I saw lots of gray and red squirrels, but one particular species really caught my eye. It's called Prevost's squirrel and it lives in Southeast Asia. This particular fellow is from Indonesia. Since you can't embed the video, you'll have to go here to see him. Isn't he handsome? He's kind of a mix off all kinds of squirrels, but still very distinctive. Enjoy.

1 comment:

Carol said...

I just found the Cornell ornithology site a couple of weeks ago too. I was looking for info on flickers as it had been a beautiful sunny day and the birds were singing up a storm.

It's a lot of fun to pick a random bird or two and play the sound for my cats.