Nestled in my favorite chair on the deck, I listen to the handful of birds not quite ready to give up on this warm summer night. A towhee commands ‘drink your tea, drink your tea’ from low in the bushes at the edge of the yard. A hermit thrush sings, his echoing vibrato calling from the forest. It is one of my favorite summer sounds.

A catbird sings a song he learned from the towhee. But he is Ella Fitzgerald to the towhee’s Maria Callas. The towhee sings his melody with subtle variations and trills, but rarely varies his notes once he has a rhythm going. The catbird, on the other hand, draws out each note: driink yoour teaa, then speeds up: drink your, drink your, drink your, ending with a raspy teee teee teee, exploring every possible version of his song, constantly testing new notes and phrasing.

Insects begin to hum and thrum. Frogs take over as darkness deepens. Tree frogs, whrrr, whrr above while spring peepers, needing more water than we have to offer, make their high-pitched calls from the swamp down the hill. Two voices I don’t recognize chime in. One is likely another frog- the cheet, cheet sound has not moved far. But it is a higher, more resonant sound than the mechanical tree frogs, and less insistent than the peepers. It could be one of the other three local species: a wood, green, or pickerel frog. The last sound I struggle to identify, but it not likely to be a bird, given the time of day.

I relax, eyes half closed, listening. Something dark flashes past. At first, I think: bat. But bats fly near the tops of the trees here. This movement is at eye level. Another flash, this time from the opposite direction. The creature lands on the back of a bird feeder, which keeps it just out of view. I get up slowly, ease the door open and reach for my binoculars, hoping not to disturb whatever it is.

Despite the binoculars, I am still not certain what I am seeing. It moves too quickly. A flash of white and the creature from the feeder now appears on the tree trunk. It stays just long enough for me to realize it is a flying squirrel, dark brown back with kohl-black smudges around the eyes, clinging to the bark. Its next thrust exposes the white underside, then he hits the ground and is gone. I take a deep breath, a grin splitting my face, then settle back to enjoy the show.

I have traveled around the world, seen elephants, giraffes, lions, tigers, and whales. Yet I have spent nearly as much time watching less well-known species go about their lives. Unlike the people who zoom around Asian and African parks hoping to check off as many species as possible, my husband and I stop whenever one of us glimpses movement. The creature whose movement we saw, is often only one of many that will appear as we sit quietly. Tonight, it has happened again. Thinking I would listen to the closing songs of the evening birds, I have met creatures I hadn’t seen before. The joy of discovery never gets old.

A squirrel comes flying in from my right, the feeder once more occupied. I risk moving closer. The squirrel continues to feed. Several incremental encroachments later I realize he (or she) is unfazed my presence. I should not have been surprised, as the local grey squirrels hesitate to leave the feeders even when I stand directly underneath. I stop worrying and stand close to the feeder watching, or trying to watch, the interchanges as squirrels move on and off the feeder and the trees.

After a while, I recognize the distinct flying squirrel movement, a glide with no flap or flutter, and realize there are trees they return to regularly. They spend little time on the ground and not much on the lower parts of the trees, which is likely the reason I hadn’t seen them before.

Later I will wander the internet and pull out our natural history books to find out what I can about the southern flying squirrel which I learn is the species found here on Cape Cod. At only nine inches long, they are tiny in comparison to our other squirrels, the eastern grey squirrel can top out at twenty inches, and the red squirrel manages an average of twelve inches.

I discover that, despite their name, flying squirrels don’t truly fly. They launch from high in the trees and glide downward. To go up, they climb like any other squirrel, using their claws to grip the tree bark. Still, they cover a lot of ground, or rather air, during their glides, regularly traveling more than 150 feet before landing on another tree. Their powerful leg muscles add impetus to their launch and to the speed of their glide.

In the air, these little rodents move their legs to steer, in the process also adjusting the gliding membranes, a thin layer of furred skin running between front and back limbs on each side, which looks and functions like Superman’s cape when spread out. Their tails serve as a rudder in the air and help them brake when they land.

But all this knowledge will have to wait. One of those miniscule superheroes is back up on a branch, now down on the nut feeder. But wait, there’s still one on the branch. He leaps the feeder sending the other onto the opposite tree. A third appears from who knows where. There are squeaks and chuckles, the sounds I struggled to identify earlier. Now two squirrels are on the tree trunk, one disappearing upward, the other poised to leap back onto the feeder. Then all three are gone. They don’t return in the half hour I sit watching for them.

Perhaps they have moved on to other feeding sites. No matter. I have met new neighbors and look forward to seeing them again.