Last night we had a strange visitor to our bird feeder. I was sitting in the kitchen and something outside caught my eye. The bird feeder was swinging, but it wasn't windy out. So I watched for a few seconds and saw this very odd little creature run down the tree, over to the pole, shimmy up the pole and take a few seeds. He would then leap from the feeder back to the tree and scurry up it. A few seconds later, long enough to eat the seeds I presume, he would repeat the process. It was too small to be a gray or red squirrel. It was about the size of a chipmunk but didn't have the same stripes; this guy's stripes were different. Plus it was out at night, when most squirrels I know are in bed. So I looked it up and it's a northern flying squirrel. We took a couple of movies of his funny little antics and grabbed this screen shot off one of them. It turns out that they are a huge prey animal for owls, which explains his nervousness.