It's January on Long Island, squirrels have hoarded away their nuts, raccoons are in their dens and chipmunks are hibernating. But I'm in Florida for the winter birding on a place called Longboat Key and can't help thinking about where these four-legged furry mammals hang out, which I accidentally discovered before going south.

My interest in these small mammals, albeit a minor one, started early on a December day more than a year ago, when by chance a squirrel came on our patio fence. It wasn't gathering nuts to store for the winter but rather appeared to be resting. With an opportunity to see a squirrel up close, I watched it through binoculars trying to keep as much out of sight as possible. Its head, ears and undertail were reddish brown. The tail flapped up over its head, looking like a thin, somewhat shabby fur coat; a woman who had known better. After doing some reading I found that my analogy might have had some truth because squirrels do use their tail for balancing, shade and in cold weather as a source of warmth.

Last fall walking the Greenbelt Trail I watched another squirrel scamper up a tree. What would it do when it got to the very top? Without skipping a beat, the squirrel jumped to a branch on another tree. Foolish earthbound mortal, I thought, the woods are an arboreal highway for squirrels. Then it stopped, but not for too long, where there were some leaves or a nest. How many times had I seen a dark mass like the one at which I was looking? Each time I wondered, was it a spot where by chance leaves were trapped or it was a bird's nest? It never had occurred to me that such odd shapes could be squirrel's nests. I stood directly under the trunk and peered up with my binoculars. From what I could see there were indeed some twigs there. So this was the squirrel's pied-á-terre.

A few weeks later on a raw morning I was on the campus of Farmingdale State University in nearby Melville wondering why two frisky squirrels would have white-sided tails? I had stepped away from my group of seniors for a moment, who were out for a walk in my Nature Journaling Workshop, admiring some trees and squirrels. Raising my binoculars to the spot on the weathered, multi-stemmed tree where the squirrels seemed frozen, I blinked, looked a second time and understood why. The Úquot;squirrelsÚquot; were in fact a snoozing raccoon. The black nose and eyes of a sleepy face peered out of a large hole on the side of the tree. The raccoon seemed to look at us, then shifted positions to have its head facing inside and an ear sticking out of the hole. It shifted positions again not showing much of itself and now looking like part of a fur coat.

I have often marveled at animals' camouflage but not anymore than at this raccoon's black and a grayish pale yellow that blended into the tree. If I were a raccoon choosing to live on a college campus, I would certainly have picked an isolated place in a hard-to-spot hole on the side of tree where only an occasional person would come.

The tree's scars were a tale for the telling. Another large hole in its center looked as if a branch once had been on a sawed away leaving interesting ridges while time had lacquer-stained the protuberance. If the squirrel's nest was a simple pied-á-terre, this by contrast was a stately Tudor apartment building past its heyday. Being a nocturnal animal, late morning was nighttime for this mammal and we moved on. I was elated and my group delighted.

On Halloween morning with the sun bright and the temperature unseasonably warm, it was Indian Summer on the Greenbelt Trail. Small brown birds, silvery wings rapidly fluttering, flew across the path too quickly to be identified. With shafts of sunlight falling on tree trunks, the woods were utterly still and had a mood of purity. Up on Cemetery Ridge, a hill adjacent to the trail, which I so named because it has the remains of a 19th century Methodist cemetery, I saw a small brown form at the base of a thin tree. Looking through my binoculars, I realized that the form was a chipmunk or a vole, flat against the tree as the squirrel had been. The little creature, which is in fact a small squirrel, was still and had an eye that looked to the side, but was fully aware of my presence. When I thought I'd seen them in the past, it was usually a still brown form on the forest floor, which looked no bigger than a sparrow, which disappeared in lightening-like fashion into the scrub. And with good reason; a chipmunk makes a nice sized meal for a red-tailed hawk.

The little mammal stayed perfectly still until I took my eyes off it for a few seconds. I saw only a bit of motion at the base of the tree where it was now inside a hole with only its tiny head visible. As I walked closer the chipmunk apparently went up the hollowed interior. I looked inside the hole, which had a smooth sliding pond-like cavity that went up the tree. This was no pied-á-terre or old Tudor apartment building but a small walk-up. I know where you live, I thought. However, I was wrong. A little research told me that chipmunks live in burrows in the earth. The tree may have been a temporary hiding place.

If you're wondering if I'm going to be looking for four-legged furries in Florida, the answer is no. My passion is for birds; small mammals are an occasional sideshow. Squirrels just aren't interesting and my eyes cannot move as fast as a chipmunk's legs, as it races to its burrow. As for raccoons, well, I'll keep an eye out for them but only one. One may be alI that is necessary, as Florida raccoons have longer tails, proportionally longer legs and stand higher than others. Meanwhile I hope that you have a mild winter on the Island and that Santa was good to you.