_Sciurus niger_]
Their vertical distribution extends from a moderate elevation above the
sea in Oregon to above 11,000 feet in southern California. They are
common in the Yellowstone and other national parks, where their size,
bright markings, and activities render them conspicuous.
Everywhere their habits resemble those of the various species of true
chipmunks with which they associate. They live in burrows, which they
dig under the shelter of logs, rocks, stumps, roots of trees, or even
in open ground, as well as in the ready-made shelter of rock slides,
with conies, at timberline. Their burrows at times have several
entrances within a small area. Often they occupy the burrows of other
animals, including pocket gophers. They excavate burrows under cabins
or barns in clearings, and abandoned mining camps or old sawmill sites
frequently abound with them. Nests and storage chambers are excavated
off the passageways. The nests are usually made of leaves and other
soft vegetable material, but in the sheep country wool, which they find
in scattered tufts, is often used.
A camping party in their haunts is certain to attract them, and, as
about barns, it is necessary to keep a watchful eye on them to prevent
their robbing grain sacks or other supplies. When they once locate an
accessible supply of grain their industry is remarkable. I have seen
a dozen or more working throughout the day, making continuous hurried
trips, with loaded cheek pouches, to their dens, sometimes two hundred
yards away. On approach of autumn they become continually active,
gathering their winter supplies.
The length of their hibernation varies with the severity of the
climate, but is rarely under five months. It is said to run through
seven months on the higher mountains of southern California. They
usually go into winter quarters in September or early in October, but
occasionally one may be seen out as late as December. At this time they
have become so fat that their movements are very sluggish. One kept as
a pet for eleven years at Klamath Falls, Oregon, is reported to have
hibernated regularly each winter. In Montana they retire to their dens
in September and come out in March. They mate soon after they appear in
spring and the young, four to seven in number, are half grown the last
of May.
Like true chipmunks, these spermophiles are fond of weedy clearings or
other openings in the forest, where stumps, logs, rocks, and old fences
offer plentiful shelter and many elevated vantage points where they may
sit by the hour watching the doings of their small world. They have a
sharp whistling or chirping call note, usually uttered as a warning
cry, but sometimes as a social call. They do not like gloomy or stormy
weather and generally lie hidden at such times, but on sunny days are
so actively engaged in foraging, running along the tops of logs, or
perching on the tops of stumps and large rocks that they add greatly
to the pleasant animation of the forests where they live. When running
they usually carry the tail elevated like a chipmunk.
They sun themselves for hours on elevated points, sometimes lying
quiescent and again sitting bolt upright, but always watchful and ready
to disappear at the slightest alarm. This watchfulness is necessary,
for their enemies are abroad at all hours. They are the prey of
bobcats, foxes, coyotes, weasels, snakes, and hawks.
The golden chipmunk and its related subspecies are omnivorous feeders.
They show a strong predilection for bacon when looting camp stores and
eat any kind of meat with avidity. Young birds and birds’ eggs are
devoured whenever found, as are also grasshoppers, beetles, flies,
larvæ, and many other insects. The number of kinds of seeds eaten is
almost endless and includes chinquapin and pine nuts, rhus, alfileria,
violet, lupine, ceanothus, and others. They also eat roses and other
flowers, green leaves, wild currants, gooseberries and other fruit, and
small tuberous roots. They often climb bushes and low trees, at least
30 feet from the ground, after nuts and berries. The capacity of their
cheek pouches is shown by one instance, when one animal was loaded with
750 serviceberry seeds. The pouches of another contained 360 grains of
barley, another 357 of oats. Bold and persistent camp robbers, their
depredations cover all articles of food, including bread and cake, and
they sometimes do considerable injury to small mountain grain fields.
I had the pleasure of living in the mountains of New Mexico and
Arizona for several years where these attractive ground squirrels were
numerous, and vividly remember them as among the most interesting of
the woodland folk. Their friendliness about forest cabins is notable
and with a little encouragement they become extremely confiding and
amusing visitors.
The young are playful, pursuing one another in apparent games of “tag”
over rocks, stumps, and logs. When partly grown they have all the
heedlessness of youth and on one occasion an observer saw the mother
repeatedly push the young back into crevices in a rock slide with her
front feet, as they persisted in trying to come out to look at the
strange intruder in their haunts.
=THE EASTERN CHIPMUNK= (=Tamias striatus= and its relatives)
(_For illustration, see page 542_)
The chipmunks are close relatives of the tree squirrels, but live
mainly on the ground, are provided with cheek pouches for carrying
food to their hidden stores, and have many ways similar to those of
the spermophiles, or ground squirrels. They are nearly circumpolar
in distribution, ranging through eastern Europe and northern Asia as
well as from the Atlantic to the Pacific in North America. On this
continent they are far more numerous in species and individuals than
in the Old World, and their center of abundance appears to lie in the
mountainous western half of the United States. Their extreme range
extends from near the Arctic Circle in Canada to Durango and Middle
Lower California, Mexico.
As a group the chipmunks are widely known for their grace, beauty of
coloration, and sprightly ways. Among the handsomest and most familiar
is the common chipmunk of Canada and the United States east of the
Great Plains. Within this area it is divided into several geographic
races, of which the best known is the brightly colored animal occupying
all the wooded region from the Great Lakes to Nova Scotia and New
England, which is the subject of the accompanying illustration. Its
vertical distribution extends from sea level to the summit of Mount
Washington, where it may be seen on pleasant summer days.
The eastern chipmunks, like most of their kind, belong to the forest
and its immediate environment. Favorite haunts are rocky ledges covered
with vines and brush, half-cleared land, the brushy borders of old
pasture fences, stone walls, and similar situations. In early days
they were so plentiful in places that they made serious inroads on
the scanty crops of the settlers, and bounties were offered for their
destruction.
No one who visits the woods of the eastern States or Canada can fail
to observe with pleasure the alert, attractive ways of these little
squirrel-like animals. They are everywhere, including the vicinity of
summer camps in the forest, and, if encouraged, prove most attractive
and friendly neighbors. To such small beasts the world is peopled with
enemies against which the only safeguard is eternal watchfulness. This
accounts for the hesitating advances and retreats so characteristic of
these chipmunks, which at the first sudden movement of any suspicious
object, or loud noise, disappear like a flash. They soon learn to
recognize a friend and in many places come regularly into camp
buildings to receive food. I doubt, however, if they ever become quite
so friendly as some squirrels under similar conditions.
Like most of the squirrel tribe, they are endowed with much curiosity,
and at the appearance of anything unusual, but not too alarming, they
seek some safe vantage point from which to peer at it with every sign
of interest. They are extremely timid and wary, however, and if
doubtful move by little cautious runs, stopping to sit up and look
about, often mounting a stump, log, or a side of a tree trunk for the
purpose, the tail all the time moving with slow undulations. If alarmed
they dash away to the nearest shelter, the tail held nearly or quite
erect and sometimes quivering excitedly. When running to shelter they
often utter chattering cries of alarm. Their principal enemies are
cats, weasels, martens, foxes, snakes, birds of prey, and the untamed
small boy with his dog. Weasels, the supreme terror of their existence,
follow them to the depths of their burrows and kill them ruthlessly.
These chipmunks are sociable and playful, often pursuing one another,
first one and then the other being the pursuer, as though in a game.
They race along fence tops and old logs and up stumps and even the
lower parts of tree trunks. Lovers of bright, sunny weather, they
usually remain hidden in their burrows during stormy days. If they
venture out at such times they are quiet and show none of the mercurial
liveliness which characterizes them when the weather is pleasant.
Their food includes a great variety of cultivated and wild plants, as
wheat, buckwheat, corn, grass seed, ragweed seed, hazelnuts, acorns,
beechnuts, strawberries, blueberries, wintergreen berries, mushrooms,
and many others. In addition they eat May beetles and other insects and
insect larvæ, snails, occasional frogs, salamanders, small snakes, and
many young birds and eggs.
At all seasons they fill their cheek pouches with food to be carried
away to their dens, but toward the end of summer or early fall they
work industriously laying up stores of seeds and nuts. Sometimes these
stores, hidden in chambers excavated for the purpose or in hollow logs
and similar places, contain several quarts of beechnuts or other nuts
or seeds. Small quantities of such food are hidden here and there under
the leaves or in shallow pits in the ground. Store-rooms in one burrow
contained a peck of chestnuts, cherry pits, and dogwood berries, and
another had a half bushel of hickory nuts.
[Illustration: ABERT SQUIRREL
_Sciurus aberti_