Visitor from Canada ?

I figured they were native. I've seen all black squirrels over near maumee a couple times since last summer. Neat little critters

Typo maumee bay

Oooh. I'd like to see that. Never seen anything but the typical orange variety in our area. I do like to watch them at the bird feeder in the yard. Kinda cute. I was in London not too long ago, and the squirrels there are very tame, walk right up to you.

They have them in Michigan too..

My friend has black squirrels in Swanton.

holland, when you are logged into your flickr account and at the squirrel photo, select
Actions --> View all sizes

and then click on the small or medium-sized version of the photo. Then place your mouse cursor on the photo, right click your mouse, and select something like "View Image" or "Copy Image Location."

This will get you the URL to the image. Copy that URL and drop it in a comment here or edit your original post and place the URL in your post.

You can leave it as a link that we can click on. Or if you want to have the photo displayed within your post, surround the image URL with exclamation points.

The flickr URL to your photo will look something like this:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/19/120069262_eacfed1492_m.jpg

Like I said, you can just leave the raw link like above, and we can click on it.

But if you surround that URL with exclamation points like this:

... the photo will display within the post:

Another option is to go into the Photos forum and upload a single photo. At the moment, I don't think the upload works if you have spaces within the photo's filename. I'll fix that eventually. I kind of forgot about this forum.

Be careful Holland :) -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4489792.stm

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

...

what badasses! there's an "in soviet russia..." joke in that one.

Squirrels are part of the rodent family.

Ohio has four species of tree squirrels: the eastern gray squirrel, eastern fox squirrel, red squirrel and the southern flying squirrel.

The red squirrel, which may sometimes be called the pine squirrel, is the smallest of the four. You can see red squirrels in the conifers at Oak Openings Metropark.

The southern flying squirrel is the most common squirrel in Ohio, but it is seldom seen because it is nocturnal. A friend who lives in West Toledo saw a flying squirrel in his backyard. They have been known to land on bird feeders at night. Of course, they don't fly. They glide.

The black squirrel is a melanistic subgroup of the eastern grey squirrel. Until this thread, I did not realize the "black squirrel" existed in metro Toledo. Melanism means the presence of an increased amount of dark pigmentation.

Another melanistic example involves the garter snake. Most garter snakes have colored stripes, but a melanistic garter snake subgroup exists along the lake shore. And melanism can occur infrequently. In May of 2009, I saw an unusual sparrow along the boardwalk at Magee Marsh. It was determined to be a melanistic White-throated Sparrow that had a dark throat and upper chest area.

The opposite is leucism, which means reduced pigmentation. This can be seen in birds at times, such as robins and grackles where some feathers are abnormally white while the rest of the bird is colored normally.

Earlier this month, birdwatchers initially reported a Snowy Owl in Ottawa County, but it turned out to be a leucistic Red-tailed Hawk, which obviously contains a lot of reduced pigmentation.

The Toledo fox squirrels are friendly at times. This is a video I shot in the fall of 2004 with my little photo camera while hand-feeding pumpkin seeds to a fox squirrel hanging from the side of an oak tree while my old indoor cat, Beanie, watched with frustration. Taking a walk in the backyard was a treat for Beanie.

Thanks for sharing Jr enjoyed reading and the video. I love squirrels and when I can tend to hand feed them old oatmeal cookies or corn in the fall.

Wow. Great video, JR. I've been welcoming squirrels at my bird feeder for years, but never have been able to get them to eat from my hand. How in the world did you do that? I've had a couple come very close, but not close enough to eat out of my hand. Thanks for sharing.

"Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report."

Read the article. I wonder if the dog was ill or feeble. I guess that could happen, particularly if the squirrels are aggressive because there is no food source. When they're in a group like that, animals are much more formidable.

Great video JR. I love squirrels and always put nuts and things out for them. I feel bad for them in the cold.
I did have a strange encounter with one at the Kroger on Monroe Street in Sylvania. I noticed the little guy following me out of the store. I had a cartfull of groceries and was loading the bags in my trunk when this squirrel jumped into my cart and started rummaging through my bags. I was dumbfounded and amused. He had no fear and I was stuck between "does this thing have rabies?" and "poor hungry thing." I ended up opening a package of cheese crackers with peanut butter in them and gave him the whole package. He scampered off with the whole thing. One of the kids who gathers carts said the squirrel was "known" to do that to people. Probably mafia affiliated! LMAO

"I had a cartfull of groceries and was loading the bags in my trunk when this squirrel jumped into my cart and started rummaging through my bags"

If that was me, I would have run away screaming. Very nice of you to offer him food, golddustwoman. I feel sorry for squirrels, too.

And when you hand raise a orphan squirrel the get pretty tame. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A3TKsJAf6I

I scatter sunflower oilers or pumpkin seeds on the ground to help the squirrels who probably have plenty of acorns stored somewhere. A dozen fox squirrels have been visiting our yard lately. I haven't tried to get friendly with this current crop. It takes time. A few years ago, I didn't start out trying to hand feed squirrels. It was really something the squirrels initiated.

In the beginning, the squirrels scattered out of the yard or up trees when I went outside to feed the birds. But they learned that when I appeared in the backyard, they had some food on the ground to eat. As time went by, the squirrels didn't scatter as far when I went outside. Eventually, they stayed near me when I filled the feeders.

Then a couple of the squirrels approached me when they saw me in the backyard even when I wasn't feeding the birds. These squirrels climbed down the oak trees and came over to my feet and looked up at me. They followed me around the yard. I threw some seed on the ground close to me. They cautiously ate it or picked it up and moved away from me. As more time passed, I knelt down and dropped seed near me and kept some seed in my outstretched hand. Finally, the squirrels took seed from my hand.

Saw some black squirrels in Norwalk, Ohio last fall.

Anyone ever see one of the white squirrels here, like those found in Illinois?

A couple of years ago, I know there were black squirrels at Wintergarden Park in Bowling Green (which may still be there). I talked to the naturalist there and he said they had appeared in the population a few years before and were multiplying. I also remember him saying that one year there were some white squirrels, but red-tailed hawks eventually picked them all off because they stood out too well.

I sometimes put peanut butter on a ritz cracker and place them on the top of my privacy fence post.When the squirrels find the crackers they will put them between their front feet and eat them while sitting on the fence post.It is fun watching them eat the crackers and peanut butter.

I live near Norwalk and all the squirrels there are black. They are beautiful.

I tried but I still cant navigate flickr to give a link for a med sized file. A url was only posssible for the original size. Is there another photo sharing service that is compatible?

BTW there is a flu going around, hence my short absence.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58555798@N08/5368316118/

I snagged the URL for the medium-sized image (640 × 427).

Thank you. Apparently I am completely inept.

As you can now see, thanks to jr, this squirrel is totally black, nose to tail tip.

Very cool pic thanks for sharing :)

I like imgur.com for quick pic sharing.

Soooooooooooo flippin cute!

"Thank you. Apparently I am completely inept."

No, holland, that's not it. flickr's new interface makes it a bit harder to grab an image URL, at least for me. Maybe an easier way exists, and I have not found it.

INeedCoffee mentioned imgur for photo sharing. It used to be that imgur would delete photos after a certain amount of time. I don't know if that's changed, or if you have to pay to keep photos indefinitely on the site.

Other photo sharing sites include:
photobucket,
Google's Picasa
ImageShack

March 2010 article Top 20 Photo Storage and Sharing Sites

The Wikipedia page List of photo sharing websites lists 35 sites.

My experience is mainly with flickr.

I don't have the server space to allow photos to be uploaded to Toledo Talk. Since plenty of free photo and video sharing sites exist, I figured that people could create an account on one of those sites, upload their photos or videos, and then embed them here for display.

holland, I "uploaded" your photo in the Photos forum here. The post is: [photo by holland] Black squirrel in local backyard.

The photo is not stored at Toledo Talk. It's uploaded to Toledo Talk temporarily. Then code on the Toledo Talk server pushes the photo to TwitPic for storage. And finally a post is made into the Toledo Talk database for the photo.

Back to flickr. To grab the URL for an image at flickr to use here, this is what I did:

1. On the squirrel image page at flickr, click "Actions" and "View all sizes."

2. flickr displays the large version of the photo, which is fine to use,

but I prefer to display a smaller version.

I clicked the link for medium 640×427 version.

3. When flickr displays the 640×427 version of the photo,

I place the mouse cursor on the photo, and right-click.

I then select "View Image" or "Copy Image Location."

The wording displayed when you right-click the mouse

will vary with browser type and version.

4. When I select "View Image" from the browser's right-mouse-click menu,

the browser will display only the photo.

From the browser URL window, copy the URL for the photo.

Paste the image URL into a post here and surround it with exclamation points to embed it for display like this:

The image will then be displayed as in the comment above.

What patience you have jr. I got it. At last.