🐿️squirrelly tail? Layla-Blog 5

I arrived at my spot at dawn 7:00-8:00. I never observed my spot really early before and I wanted to do the opposite of dusk to see if I noticed any major differences between the two times. I’ve always done my sit spots during the afternoon and wanted to see how much of a difference of activity there would be with any animals and if the amount of light affects their desire to come out as well. Also, since it was colder I wanted to see what animals would come out.

It was much colder than last time about 37 degrees. There was a lot of frost still on the ground and so many more dead leaves and dead pine needles. There’s still some trees with green leaves but some have started to change color and there’s even a few bare trees which is new to me because that usually doesn’t happen until early December. The sky was very clear not a single cloud and there was occasionally breeze but it was very sunny. There wasn’t too many animals that I saw. I hear a lot of different birds calls. Some were really unique sounding like one seemed to be changing its pitch slightly higher each time while others just kept a constant chirp with little variation to it. There was also a really strange noise that I believe was coming from an insect. It sounded like purring almost and was very deep. I tried researching it and the only insect that sounded similar to it was the Dor beetle. Though, I don’t believe it resides in the U.S. I’ve never heard this noise before and it was very hard to find any results of purring insects.

Though, I did see a squirrel hopping around in the dead leaves but it caught me off guard because half of its tail was missing! I felt bad for the little thing! It was probably attacked by some predator. It seemed to be apprehensive of my presence and ran off into woods after a took some pictures of it. I wasn’t sure how important their tails were for survival so I did some research and some squirrels use their tails for territorial situations but since this was a grey squirrel they actually enjoy living communally. Though, other than the squirrel there wasn’t many animals that passed by me.

My last session had the same issue of not seeing too many animals. I was surprised that I didn’t see any deer which I almost always do. It could be due to the fact I was do my sit spots in the afternoon so the time of day could be the reason. Also, there was much more light than usual so that could also be a thing. The weather was much colder so the activity of certain animals could be been affected. I don’t hear any cicadas anymore which is not shocking cause of the cold so that could be the reason I’m noticing different species of bugs and the squirrel could be looking for some extra acorns since winter is very present, which is why I’m subtly now seeing/ hearing these animals.

Some interesting things I saw was some bark that had I believe some type of fungus that looked like a honey comb as well as some animal dung that looked like a pinecone.