By no means having seen the species within the wild I used to be delighted we had good views of a 13-lined Floor Squirrel (Ictidomys tridecemlineatus) because it ventured out of its burrow to eat dandelion heads. We had been in Des Lacs Nationwide Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota on the finish of Might.
Broadly distributed within the grasslands and prairies, from Canada south to Texas, this floor squirrel was additionally identified by various frequent names together with Striped Gopher and Leopard Floor Squirrel. It’s omnivorous taking bugs and, apparently, even mice and shrews. I’ll return to its dietary necessities in one other article since my data of its omnivory apparently saved an experiment within the mid-Nineteen Sixties, incomes just a few soon-forgotten brownie factors.
These nonetheless pictures had been taken from 4K video and processed in Photoshop and Topaz DeNoise AI.
