Thursdays I now volunteer at Walnut Canyon National Monument. The staff and volunteers are great, and I enjoy my time outside meeting and talking with visitors - always wearing a mask, keeping outside and always keeping as much distance as possible.
When I volunteered for Flashlight Tours at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, one of my favorite stations was the Palo Verde Tree where we talked about pocket mice, who used their pockets (actually their cheeks) to gather the bean pods from the tree.
While in front of the Visitor Center Thursday, we saw a pocket gopher. Here is some info about them from the National Wildlife Federation:
Pocket gophers are fossorial rodents named for their fur-lined cheek pouches. Their cheek pouches, or pockets, are used for transporting bits of plant food that they gather while foraging underground. They have special adaptations for their burrowing lifestyle, including clawed front paws for digging, small eyes and ears, and sensitive whiskers and tails. They’re also able to close their lips behind their long incisors so they can use their teeth to loosen soil without getting any dirt in their mouths. Pocket gophers are medium-sized rodents that range in length from 5 to 14 inches.
This one had at least six connected entrances to the underground home and s/he was busy gathering juniper berries. Here are a couple of still photos.
This video shows some reticence on her/his part, probably because two of us were there with cameras.
This one was when I was there alone and I simply zoomed in from a greater distance, so I got to record more action.
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