Good morning everyone! Happy International Chipmunk Appreciation Day!! If you have chipmunks where you live, why not give them a peanut? If you don’t have chipmunks, wear something brown today! After all, chipmunks are among the cutest animals on earth. But they do have limited distribution, of the 25 species of chipmunks all but one are found in North America. The Siberian chipmunk is found in Russia, through northern China and northern Japan. They are also found in small numbers in some northern European countries due to people keeping them as pets in the 1950s and 60s.

The practice was banned however and many chipmunks were let loose in country areas. Only 5 species are found here in Canada, two are in our area here, the eastern chipmunk which is the largest chipmunk species and one of the western chipmunks which are quite a bit smaller. All the ones that come here for peanuts are the eastern chipmunk. I will give more facts about our fascinating little friends later today. Pocket and Coffee have been the only two here this morning so far. Jasper came for a while too. Jasper and Coffee jumped up onto the step at the same time, wow, did they jump! And ran off in opposite directions!

Jasper hid in a box while Coffee ran off the deck. Jasper came back out, grabbed a peanut and went back under a box to eat it in peace. Meanwhile Coffee came back, took what he could carry and left again. Pocket came too and spotted Jasper in the box so he stopped and looked. Then he realized it was okay, just Jasper, so he too filled up with peanuts and left. Freddie, the squirrel, was here this morning again. I don’t really want him around, just Jasmine and Jasper. Too many squirrels will cause problems when I start to feed the birds again. And Freddie is kind of a mean squirrel, but he’s still afraid of Jasmine!

Not many dragonflies around anymore, so I probably missed a few species this year for pictures. I hope that nice green one is still around though. We do have other green dragonflies, but this one is different, more of a metallic green, I have not seen this one before this year. There’s a couple others I hadn’t seen before this year as well, but I did get pictures of them. Now I need to identify all these dragonflies so I can start showing their pictures. Maybe I’ll be able to walk down to the river today, but it is quite cloudy, and we have had a little rain already too. Hmm, I need to bake a cake this morning too. Muffin is waiting impatiently to help out. Actually, I think she went to bed. Oh well, she’ll help with the eating anyway. I hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2021 Steve McLeod.