Posts in Category: squirrel
Squirrel Economy
Sunday was a drizzly, darkish fall day, but that seemed to be perfect acorn harvesting weather, as far as our backyard squirrels were concerned. Three or four of them spent the afternoon finding acorns and burying them. The finding was not hard. We have the heaviest crop of acorns I can ever remember. Backing out of the drive way all you hear is the crunch and pop of acorns under the tires. We have drifts of them in front yard. But to the squirrels it seemed to be business as usual. Locate an acorn, run out into the middle of they yard well away from the trees, sniff the acorn well, and bury with a few swipes of the front paws. Over and over.
This is, in may ways, a quintessential fall shot. It was taken from the back door, inside, sheltered from the drizzle, at 1800mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter). Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/160th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
And, just for fun, here is what aught to be the quintessential shot of a fall squirrel.
3/7/2012: La Famous La Jolla Ground Squirrel
Leaving the Children’s Pool at La Jolla, where I had enjoyed an hour of watching and photographing, and videoing, the seal pups with their mothers (see Seal Love from last Saturday) I walked up on this Ground Squirrel sitting on the top of the hedge that separates the sidewalk from the rocks of the sea cliff. I stopped, not 8 feet from it, and fumbled my camera out, thinking all the time that it would be off before I got a shot. It just sat there. It sat there while I took as many pics as I wanted. It sat there while a group of tourists came up and asked me what I was doing. It was still sitting there when I walked on. Squirrely! Or rather, most un-squirrely.
And a bit of googling this morning tells me that I was shooting a celebrity unknowing. It appears the La Jolla Ground Squirrels are famous. There are lots of pics of them on Facebook. They have featured on Google+. They have several YouTube videos. They do not have their own wiki entry yet, sharing the glory with the general population of California Ground Squirrels, but it is clearly only a matter of time.
Canon SX40HS, Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. I appear to have had the camera in 1.5x digital tel-extender. I am not certain if that was intentional or not, but it did keep the shutter speed high. 1) 370mm equivalent field of view, f5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. 2) 126mm, f4 @ 1/1250 @ ISO 100. 3) 1134mm, f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.