Wildlife, landscape and weather photography
A common creature and not one that I normally photograph. However, one day this past week, this one seemed truly enamored with me.
I was taking pictures of a different creature and the #squirrel was constantly staring at me. It kind of made me self-conscious. 😉 I figured I would snap the little one’s pic since it was being so cooperative.
It looked a little bit raggedy with its fur kind of a mess and that crazy tail.
So, I just learned it is National Squirrel Appreciation Day. Go figure. I never knew there was such a thing! Certainly I would hate to not give the little bushy-tailed creatures their due so here you go.
This one was hanging out in a local open space not far from where I live back in October. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered taking pics of it but it did look pretty cute up there
This was one fast-moving little creature. While in Katmai National Park and Preserve, I spotted quite a few of them but they were not ones to linger. They would dart in and out of their holes, rarely stopping at all. This one let me get one capture before running off on its summer errands.
The arctic ground squirrel is a fascinating little creature. It hibernates for 7 to 8 months out of the year. During that time, its core body temperature actually will drop to below freezing!
This is called supercooling and during that time it will have body temperatures down to 27 degrees, the lowest body temperature known in any mammal. Its heart-rate will drop to a mere one beat per minute while hibernating as well.
These little guys can’t get to my bird feeders but that doesn’t stop them from looking for a meal. They oftentimes are hanging out on the ground under the feeder, hoping to catch the sunflower seeds and peanuts that the birds drop. This guy was pretty clever in that he would go to the adjacent tree and watch. When something fell to the ground, he would run down, grab it, then scurry back up the tree to watch for more.
Not a great quality pic as I was a good ways away when this little guy chose to head down the tree but a fun capture. I and a bunch of other shutterbugs were focused on much larger wildlife nearby. We all start hearing the sounds of things hitting the ground nearby and, looking up, tree branches are bouncing up and down. A closer look found this squirrel, picking pine cones off the tree, dropping them below and then, eventually, going down to gather them. Pretty clever and much easier than going up and down multiple times. 😉
A very brave – or perhaps dumb – squirrel on this morning. Watching these two this morning was hilarious. The squirrel would approach and then the second the Bald Eagle looked at it, it would scamper back. The eagle would look away, the squirrel would approach. This went back and forth for five minutes. So funny! I shot mostly stills of the encounter but did switch to video briefly to capture some of it.
While standing and waiting for my primary photo subject to do something exciting, this little guy was looking on and kept distracting me. Finally I simply had to take pictures of it as it was so darned cute. These black squirrels are not near as common in Colorado as their rust / brown colored cousins, the Fox Squirrel, so it was pretty cool to be able to see one.
Soon after setting up our first campsite in Jasper National Park, I began hearing this very odd sound – almost like a screeching. Not quite like a bird but also not anything I had heard before. Keeping watch I finally found the culprit – a Colombian Ground Squirrel. They were usually quiet but sometimes, for whatever reason, they could raise quite a ruckus.
They are common in the northern Rocky Mountains and in the coldest parts of their reach, they hibernate the majority of the year. You can read more about them here.
This little guy clearly has been spoiled by visitors to Cherry Creek State Park. With a few shutterbugs gathered taking pictures, the squirrel showed absolutely no fear of humans, walking right up to them and standing up begging for a handout. While he was cute as heck, we managed to resist its charms and it soon moved on to another group.
The Fox Squirrel is the largest tree squirrel native to North America. It is quite common here in the Denver area where it has proven to be very adaptable to urban environments.
This little one was quite the chatterbox as it worked to fill its belly and its nest. It was busily working its way through a pine tree, tossing pine cones down below to gather later. I was sitting outside enjoying the quiet but was being interrupted by continual ‘thump’ sounds as the pine cones hit the ground not 20 feet away.
When I went to investigate, the squirrel made it clear in no uncertain terms that the tree and its bounty were its and it would prefer it if I kept my distance. 😉
