red-eared slider ~ 12/25/13 ~ Golden Gate Park

 

red-eared slider

Trachemys scripta elegans

I rarely get pictures of turtles I find, because they're either very shy or inaccessible and surrounded by water.  This one at Stow Lake was very accommodating to my creeping up on it.  Maybe it's used to lots of people, or maybe it was someone's pet?  According to Austin's Turtle Page, "Red-eared Sliders are thought to be far & away the highest volume pet turtle produced world-wide & are often sold to people who believe they get little larger than hatchlings.  Therefore they're probably the most widely & often dumped into the wild (both inside & outside their native range) of any turtle species on earth."  That's too bad.  They're a striking-looking turtle, and like its look-alike western painted turtle (Chrysemys picta bellii), they're introduced into CA.

with a swish of the tail

See my eastern gray squirrel post or Crappy Photo Blog for more information.

eastern gray squirrel ~ 12/25/10 ~ Golden Gate Park

eastern gray squirrel
Sciurus carolinensis

New followers of Nature ID may think I have a fondness for squirrels considering my several squirrel posts in the past few months; I don't particularly like these rodents. However, I think I've finally figured out how to distinguish between the different species of squirrels in California.

What caught my attention with the ones shown above were the shockingly white bellies. Close to home, Fatty, a California ground squirrel, and the eastern fox squirrel have definite buff colored bellies. I wasn't too surprised to find out while searching for an ID, that the eastern gray squirrel was introduced to San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties... it's no wonder I don't see them around home in Monterey County.

I was amazed at how tame this family of eastern grays were near the boathouse along the Stow Lake trail in Golden Gate Park. As I was attempting to take pictures in the dark lighting and rain, several people came by to feed these squirrels nuts and such. It looked like it was a regular routine of theirs, complete with ready sandwich baggies filled with squirrel food. One older couple complained to me that she was once bitten by a squirrel, so that they now toss their nuts out on the ground to avoid direct contact. I quietly chuckled as they walked away bickering like long-married couples so often do.

ps 08/28/11 - I should have mentioned there's also a native western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) that also has a white belly. From what I've gathered they tend to be grayer, larger, and shy compared to the easterns. The Nature of a Man blogger twice mentions how the eastern gray is taking over the western gray in CA.

pss 10/18/12 - Ken also has nice side-by-side pictures of the silvery western versus the browner eastern grays.