{"id":71515,"date":"2019-05-05T04:58:41","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T10:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=71515"},"modified":"2019-05-05T05:43:06","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T11:43:06","slug":"uinta-ground-squirrels-can-really-throw-some-dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrels-can-really-throw-some-dirt\/","title":{"rendered":"Uinta Ground Squirrels Can Really Throw Some Dirt!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I ever have to replace the stop and waste valve on my sprinkler system again I’d like to hire this guy for the digging part of it. I’d pay him top wages too.<\/p>\n

All photos are presented in the order they were taken.<\/em><\/p>\n

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When I was in the mountains a couple of days ago I found a few active Uinta Ground Squirrels. Most were unapproachable but this one was an exception because “he” was so involved with excavating his burrow. Here he’s about to begin another digging session.<\/p>\n

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Often I couldn’t see him, only the dirt flying out of the burrow entrance and sometimes…<\/p>\n

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he threw it a great distance.<\/p>\n

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More than once I noticed large dirt clods or rocks included in the excavated material.<\/p>\n

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Several times he came out to inspect the growing pile of dirt at the burrow entrance and when he did there was evidence of his excavation activities all over his face.<\/p>\n

The higher the dirt pile became the more difficult it was to throw dirt up onto it from inside the burrow so…<\/p>\n

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he would flatten it out while he was on top of it and then…<\/p>\n

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go back down into the burrow and throw some more dirt.<\/p>\n

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Every time he came out to inspect the growing dirt pile his face was dirtier than it was the time before.<\/p>\n

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I was impressed by how much dirt he could throw and by how far he could throw it.<\/p>\n

But the elevation of the growing dirt pile continued to be a problem so he…<\/p>\n

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used his nose as a bulldozer blade to flatten it out again.<\/p>\n

This process continued for quite a while before he…<\/p>\n

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eventually stood up at the edge of the dirt pile and then scurried over to what I believe was another entrance to his burrow. At that point he was much further away so I left the area.<\/p>\n

All this was quite interesting for me to watch. When I was growing up on the Montana farm Richardson’s Ground Squirrels were everywhere and I spent a lot of time watching them but I rarely if ever saw them excavating their burrows from a close enough distance to really appreciate their technique.<\/p>\n

Mammals can be almost as much fun to photograph as birds.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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If I ever have to replace the stop and waste valve on my sprinkler system again I’d like to hire this guy for the digging part of it. I’d pay him top wages too.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71524,"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],"tags":[1858,4532,4533,2198],"class_list":["post-71515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ground-squirrels-gophers","tag-digging","tag-excavating-burrows","tag-throwing-dirt","tag-uinta-ground-squirrel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/uinta-ground-squirrel-5105-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-iBt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71515","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=71515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}