🐿 NEFSN News - October 14th, 2024
🔈Last call for nest collection and box clean outs!
Hi everyone! I know Fall has only just started, but we need to finish some things before the Winter season begins.
Here are some updates on what we’ve been up to:
CJ had a talk at Woodlawn in Ellsworth, Maine just recently where she presented the flying squirrel project. Many who attended were very excited to leave with a nest box to monitor for use. In addition to CJ’s talk, there was discussion about getting more people in the area involved including homeschoolers. We’re excited for their involvement in the project!
We met with a group of girls in the STEM Horizons program at the YMCA and presented to them about the project in May. We put up 4 boxes with them. The girls were very excited to learn about flying squirrels and invasive plants in their area when we were pointing them out to them during the walk to where we’d put their boxes up.
We’re slowly but surely getting through the nest checks and looking for any hairs, fleas, or fecal matter from both participants and our own nests.
We’re still sending out nest collection kits to participants who need them. We’ll stop sending out kits sometime close to when Winter begins so if you have a nest ready for collection and would like a nest collection kit please let us know now.
Important notice for participants:
In the Winter, we are not allowed to collect any nests from our boxes or from participant boxes. We’ll stop sending out nest collection kits when Winter arrives and we’ll send out another notice letting you all know to stop collecting or cleaning out any nests you may have in your boxes.
Since it’s still Fall right now you are still able to clean out any old nests as well as collect any flying squirrel nests you may have in your boxes (unless an animal is actively using the nest). These last few weeks that we have are your last chance to request a nest collection kit so you can collect your nest and send it out to us for observation/analysis. If you have a suspected flying squirrel nest, please send us an email and we’ll get a nest collection kit ready for you.
Shalissa checks the Survey123 app where you submit data to see if anyone has a suspected flying squirrel nest and has been reaching out to participants to see if they’d like to send their nest to us. She’ll be doing more checks throughout the next month to see if there are any last-minute nests to collect before the Winter season begins and we are no longer allowed to collect nests.
Here’s a cute flying squirrel picture to leave you with. This photo was taken by Dan Gardoqui from Lead with Nature when he found two flying squirrels in his nest box! If you’d like to learn more about Lead with Nature you can follow this link: https://www.leadwithnature.com/
Gratitude
Juliet, Margaret, Isabella, Samantha, Faith, Madison, and Nora have been working hard analyzing the flying squirrel hair samples that we received. It’s a very time-consuming process so we’d like to thank them for sticking through with it! We’d like to also make a request to participants for their patience as our team follows through on our protocol for analyzing and checking flying squirrel hairs. Our team has been working hard to identify what type of flying squirrel each hair belongs to and we want to express our appreciation for all of the work that they’ve been doing. Thank you all for putting your data in Survey 123 and helping out with the project. It could not happen without your support.
Keep up with NEFSN on all of our socials!
You can find links to them here.
