Douglas’ Squirrels

Sign of Sanity

While visiting Olympic National Park, my wife and I escaped the crowds of the Hall of Mosses Trail and walked down the lovely Hoh River Trail. When you spend time photographing something as common as a squirrel at a place as special as the Hoh Rain Forest, some of the other tourists look at you with a mixture of curiosity and pity, as though you're either slightly mad or slightly a moron.

Both of which might be true, but I enjoy photographing squirrels and will do it no matter where I am, especially species like this one that I see less often.

Douglas' squirrel eating seeds in Tualatin Hills Nature Park in Beaverton, Oregon

I Didn’t Expect To See You Here

One day after work I went to Tualatin Hills Nature Park in Beaverton. I hadn’t been hiking in quite a while and wanted a little change. I took the big lens and tripod with me and two hours later it was pretty obvious I wasn’t in the best hiking shape. I went to bed more than a little sore but thankful for the time in the outdoors.

In urban areas, Oregon’s native tree squirrels have largely been replaced by eastern foxes and eastern grays. And while I saw eastern foxes yesterday, it was the black stripe of this squirrel that immediately grabbed my attention. This is a Douglas’ squirrel, a native here in the Northwest that I hadn’t expected to see in a city park. Tualatin Hills is heavily forested, so apparently these squirrels are able to share their habitat with the more aggressive squirrels from the east.

This squirrel’s handiwork was everywhere, there were little middens of soft scales from the cones all along this section of the trail. They pull apart the cones to get at the seed inside, like the one being eaten in the picture. Given the many piles scattered here and there, this shy creature seemed to be pretty well fed.

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