If you’re not feeling chipper this Monday, have a gander at these lovely chipmunks (they’re Eastern chipmunks, or Tamias striatus) photographed by reader Diana MacPherson. They came with an email:
I often have chipmunks at my house and put out seeds for them on my deck. These are from a couple years ago now but there are a bunch of new babies that have just come out and I’m hoping to get pictures of them.
They often look like they are pondering deep questions & wringing their hands.
This one looks as if it’s taken aboard a full cargo of seeds:
I love chipmunks but hardly ever see them in the eastern U.S., and never in Chicago.
Stay tuned for the babies. . .
We don’t have chipmunks in Godzone. We have marsupial possums and gliders filling the corresponding ecological niches.
Are chipmunks related to squirrels, and if so, how closely?
According to Wikipedia, they group with the marmots (which include groundhogs/woodchucks), true ground squirrels (including prairie dogs), and Chinese rock squirrels within the larger squirrel family Sciuridae.
I grew up with chipmunks in Alabama – burrows popping up all over the place in my parents’ yards. They’re way more fun to watch than squirrels.
I grew up with them in Milwaukee, WI close to Chicago, so I imagine they live in the wooded residential areas on the far outskirts of Chicago. Lovable creatures, made even more adorable by their expressive twittering sounds. But my parents (who still live in Milwaukee) hate them with a passion. Apparently they destroy houses and yards…
They’re fiercely territorial. I’ve watched them run and leap at each other like meth-addled Pokemon in a Bruce Lee movie.
“like meth-addled Pokemon in a Bruce Lee movie.”
Ha! Picturing that made me laugh out loud.
That first picture is so funny! Made me laugh out loud!
“What, me? No, I didn’t eat all the pies.”
I have a family of the things eating my tomatoes right now (ably assisted by mockingbirds). Requested that the cats restore some discipline, but to no avail. There is limited feline interest in protecting plants. Occasionally they get the idea, everyone gets a little exercise for a few seconds, and then things calm down and the raiding continues.
I could try to trap them and mail them to Chicago if you’re interested?
I have many, many chipmunks in my yard (yesterday I saw a little conference of 5 of them sitting on my backyard steps!) and yes, they like to dig in my flower pots and scatter dirt all over for no damn reason at all.
But I have a trick which curtails this pretty well. You don’t need an actual cat prowling the tomatoes: you just need some of their poo-poo.
Place a little meat-eating predator scat around the places which need special protection. If necessary, refresh it now and then. Make it look like their favorite place to delve is frequently used by a CAT.
Whoa … dude. Chip and Dale aren’t touching it.
I once read a magazine article which suggested this same strategy to keep deer away from a garden. Only the writer didn’t raid the kitty litter – he went to a zoo and requested some fecal material from the lions. Placed it around the perimeter and claimed the deer never came back. Maybe.
It’s worth a shot, anyway. If you don’t have your own supply anyone with a cat will probably be happy to let you borrow some — and keep it. The only down side is that it smells a bit when you water it and/or let it sit in the sun.
They love to bury seeds in the potted plants here too. Sometimes you get all new plants coming up! 🙂 I think a chippy may have been responsible for planting a nice tree below the deck that I put further in the yard too! I let them dig stuff because of their cuteness.
The also get on the bird feeder and occasionally the squirrel guard (which doesn’t work & just acts as a platform for squirrels) flips them off and they tumble head over tail onto the grass only to try again. Poor chippies!
I’d heard the lion/tiger vs deer idea but had never extrapolated to chipmunks and the litter box. Simple to try – Thx
Plenty of them in Chicago’s south burbs. Unfortunately several of the commit suicide in my pool every year.
I have seen plenty of chipmunks on the Cornell hawk cam.
I have them cyclically in my ecosystem E of Pittsburgh. They move in, and then the snakes move into the woodpile, and then the chipmunks disappear. Then the snakes move on and after awhile we get chipmunks again, and the cycle starts over. They seem to have a particular affinity for hyacinth bulbs, which it the thing I find least attractive about them.
I got in trub trub for feeding them at Crater Lake, there was a do not feed sign and everything including a potential erosion problem caused be too many chipmunks getting fed by tourists. It wasn’t my fault though, it was the cuteness what made me do it. The park ranger was really mad.
Those were perhaps western ground squirrels, Otospermophilus beecheyi). The Pacific coast lacks true chipmunks.
[Now, big argument over the meaning of “true”.]
These?
That first one has cheeks full of seeds. Planning to squirrel them away for later, no doubt.
My chipmunks insist on executing their loud, piercing “chip! chip! chip!” outside my bedroom window for what seems like hours at a time, early in the morning. Darn chipmunks. Good thing they’re cute as hell.
The thing that gets me about them is that they never move smoothly. They always move in little jerks. I’m guessing it makes it more difficult for a visual predator to spot their motion.
I get to see these cute little mammals scurrying about in my backyard everyday. They do look so adorable and cuddly. But several days ago I observed some chipmunk feeding behavior that both surprised me and forever altered the vision I hold of them in my head.
I had always assumed (incorrectly I have since learned) that these cute little buggers ate mostly nuts, with an occasional insect thrown in. To my great surprise several days ago I observed one on my backyard brick patio munching away on the brains of a bird. I watched for about half an hour as the little fella literally ate the entire bird: brains, flesh, bones and feathers. I took quite a few photographs. Thinking I had witnessed some abnormal feeding behavior, I went investigating on the internet. There I learned that the furry little critters do occasionally eat birds, snakes, and frogs. Even watched a video online of one snacking on a bird in a tree. Seems this is a source of calcium for them that they don’t otherwise get in their diet.
Well, my ignorance was corrected, and I suppose I should not have been surprised. But Alvin and the Chipmunks just ain’t the same anymore.
I once saw one eating a slug. Yuck! The chippy kept trying to shove the rather large slug into his mouth every which way. It was so gross.
The bird brain thing sounds worse though – maybe it was a zombie chipmunk. 😉