2017-04-19 With Round-Tailed Ground Squirrels

 My involvement with the San Diego County Mammal Atlas project made me aware of the Round-Tailed Ground Squirrel species. Prior to this I had not a clue about this small rodent. The images that were submitted for the project were nice enough, but lacked pixel resolution and were not shot with a long lens and suffered in quality when cropped for the publication.

My friend David who lives in El Centro told me he knew where there were colonies of these animals living nearby. As my route to Arizona would carry me through that vicinity I made it a point to follow his instructions and locate the squirrel colonies. He gave me good instructions on how to find the animals, and I was successful in gathering up good images. I’m not sure whether these images will make it into the atlas as they are not from within San Diego County. Those images previously mentioned were, and that rates high with the editors and authors of the atlas accounts. Regardless, I find personal satisfaction in knowing I gathered some quality images of these animals.

When I finally finished with the squirrels late in the afternoon, I continued on to the Salton Sea to revisit places I love there. Those images we’ll come up to display on the next installment.

Images gathered on this day are displayed below: