Yesterday I saw one of our Abert's squirrels. The name is after Colonel John James Abert, an American naturalist and military officer who headed the Corps of Topographical Engineers and organized the effort to map the American West in the 19th century.

They live in the southern Rocky Mountains of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, but their range extends up into Wyoming where there are ponderosa pine forests, like around here.

They are usually gray with a white underside, and we've got those here, but we also have the all black ones, which are unique to the Colorado Rocky Mountain foothills.



Lately, I've been seeing the more common red squirrel. And yesterday when the Abert's was here, the red squirrel ran it off.