Richardson’s Ground Squirrel

Richardson's Ground Squirrel aka Flickertail

I have lost count of the number of times I have been to Grasmere in the Lake District for Rank Prize Funds symposia. Not all that long ago the only place in the village it was possible to get a mobile phone signal was by the church tower. I did not know until today that the grave of Sir John Richardson FRS FRSE (1787-1865) lies only a few yards from where I struggled with my Nokia. Indeed, in June were were in North Dakota watching this eponymous Ground Squirrel harvest the grass seeds and leaves from around it burrow; in July I was back in Grasmere—but not in the churchyard.

It also took me years to discover that a ground squirrel I kept in the early 1960s was of this species. They were listed by animal dealers of the time as Flickertails. It was only when I got a hold of Walker’s Mammals of the World that I found there other common and scientific names. So common is the ground squirrel that North Dakota has the nickname, Flickertail State. The tail which is small really does flick but in long grass the movement is difficult to see. My Flickertail became tame, up to a point. It would take food from the hand but any closer movement meant a rapid retreat to a cave I had arranged on a thick substratum of dried earth and sand in which it could dig.

Sir John Richardson was born in Dumfries, and a graduate of Edinburgh medical school. He served as a naval surgeon and arctic explorer. He was a friend of Sir John Franklin and a member of the latter’s expeditions of 1819-1822 and 1825-1827. He was also involved in the vain search for Franklin and his team in 1847. Joseph Sabine FRS (1770-1837) lawyer, turned horticulturalist, botanist and zoologist named the ground squirrel after Richardson in 1822.

Richardson’s Ground Squirrel has been assigned to several genera over the years. For decades it was known as Spermophilus richardsonii but in 2009 that genus was split into eight and S. richardsonii became Urocitellus richardsonii.

Seeing these ground squirrels involved nothing more than walking out of the hotel door in Minot, North Dakota and looking over an area of mown grass between the hotel and the main road. There these ground squirrels popped up and down into their burrows, not concerned at all by vehicular traffic but soon disappearing when humans walked by.