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| Ground Squirrel at Grandview Park (Otospermophilus beecheyi) |
I can only imagine how this California Ground Squirrel made its way to Grandview Park, and I can only hope he's not alone up there. I'm going to call him Gus for now, but hopefully there's a Grandview Gloria nearby as well.
My wife and I saw him yesterday by luck. I had been checking out some plants near the edge of the park as we were out for a walk when I spooked something that sounded too big to be a bird. I didn't get a great look at it as it darted away through dense ground cover, but my wife was perfectly positioned to see it dive into its burrow. Later in the day I went back to see if I could place a trail cam near the burrow, but I didn't see a good spot for it. Luckily I also had the FZ80 with me, and I was ready when the squirrel briefly showed itself.
I had never seen a ground squirrel in San Francisco before, and a check of iNaturalist shows few sightings anywhere near Grandview. Most are out around Candlestick Park.
I was interested to see that some coast buckwheat flower heads near the burrow had been chewed off, leaving bare, pointy stems sticking up. If that's what the squirrel likes to eat, there should be plenty of food to last a while. I do wonder if Gus will be able to stay, or if he'll just be passing through like the river otter, Sutro Sam, who had to move on after eating all the fish in Sutro Baths.
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| iNaturalist Ground Squirrel Observations Map (The sighting on Market Street is from 1989, but the one by the Embarcadero is from 2021.) |
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