Largely because of obstructions in front of the squirrel these 8 images are only of documentary quality but I find nothing wrong with good documentation of bird and critter behaviors. I don’t know the sex of the squirrel but for the sake of\u00a0convenience I’ll refer to it as a male. All\u00a0photos are presented in the order they were taken. Image techs for these photos are at or near: 1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 320, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L IS II USM @ 400mm<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1918-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-1918-ron-dudley\\"")
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It had rained heavily the night before (damn,\u00a0did\u00a0my pickup ever get\u00a0muddy from driving\u00a0on those dirt\/gravel roads!)\u00a0and the squirrel was having a breakfast of grass so he was soaked through and through. It almost appeared to me as if he had spent an entire cycle inside a washing machine.\u00a0Water droplets can easily be seen on the grasses in the background.<\/p>\n
He had been eating\u00a0when I first approached but he assumed this alert posture for a few moments before he went back to his meal.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1934-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-1934-ron-dudley\\"")
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I actually laughed out loud while watching him eating the grass. He would use his dexterous paws as if they were hands to\u00a0place the end of a tender young\u00a0grass stem in his mouth and then…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1938-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-1938-ron-dudley\\"")
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release it with his paws…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1952-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-1952-ron-dudley\\"")
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and the grass stem would begin to disappear…<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1957-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-1957-ron-dudley\\"")
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as if he was sucking in a\u00a0piece of green spaghetti. It reminded me of\u00a0the sneaky games my sister Mona and I used to play with spaghetti\u00a0at the kitchen\u00a0table when we thought our parents weren’t looking. Mom definitely wouldn’t put up with those kinds of hijinks at the table.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1972-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-1972-ron-dudley\\"")
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But soon he’d apparently\u00a0eaten his fill\u00a0so he turned to face the sun and\u00a0began to dry himself off by licking his sodden\u00a0fur. It was cold\u00a0in the mountains that early in the morning (37 degrees F.) and he was sopping wet so I imagine he was uncomfortably chilled.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1991-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-1991-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
Here his tongue can be seen as it sops up some of the water on his right front leg.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-2020-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"uinta-ground-squirrel-2020-ron-dudley\\"")
<\/p>\n
In fact immediately after licking somewhere on his body he would usually (maybe always)\u00a0flick his tongue in and out as if he was relishing having a drink.<\/p>\n
For part of my time with him I was distracted by a male American Goldfinch singing in a tree to my left (no, I didn’t get any decent shots) so I may have missed some interesting behavioral\u00a0photos of the squirrel.<\/p>\n
If so, maybe next time…<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday morning I wanted a change in venue so I headed for the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City. This cute little Uinta Ground Squirrel entertained me for about 15 minutes with its behaviors and antics.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2195,395],"tags":[845,168,4021,2198,4020,311,318],"class_list":["post-59311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ground-squirrels-gophers","category-miscellaneous","tag-eating-grass","tag-grooming","tag-licking-to-dry-off","tag-uinta-ground-squirrel","tag-urocitellus-armatus","tag-utah-2","tag-wasatch-mountains"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-1938-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fqD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}