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.