![]() ![]() Not a few tree seedlings have sprouted thanks to forgotten seed caches, and early foresters used to raid these middens for their valuable conifer seeds.ĭouglas’s squirrels also eat bird eggs, flowering plant (angiosperm) parts like berries, seeds, flowers, and leaf buds, the cambium of small branch shoots, and importantly, fungi. These storage areas, or middens, are often covered in the residue of cone scales below a favorite eating perch. They collect seeds and cones in mass quantities (thus a “larder”) and bury them in moist underground areas or in tree cavities that preserve the seed’s nutrition, for later access. Unlike some other squirrels that scatter their food caches all around, Douglas’s squirrels are larder hoarders. In the fall, they busily prepare for the coming winter, since they do not hibernate. ![]() Stripping the outside scales of a cone with their sharp and ever-growing incisor teeth, Douglas’s squirrels extract their conifer-seed meal from the safety of a tree branch or an easily escaped ground perch. From sea level to the subalpine, Douglas’s squirrels occupy stands of pine, fir, spruce, and hemlock, where their favorite foods abound: conifer seeds and fungi. Habitat and Distributionĭouglas’s squirrels live year-round in conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest, from British Columbia south through western Washington and Oregon, and down into northwestern California and the Sierra Nevada. The Douglas’s squirrel can grow to 37 cm long (14 inches), including its tail. In summer, a dark line is clearly visible between its abdomen and back, and its winter coat sports small, dark ear tufts. Distinctly smaller than the western gray squirrel ( Sciurus griseus) that overlaps its range, the Douglas’s squirrel has a brownish-gray back, tawny-orange belly, and a white to tawny eye-ring. It’s also called a chickaree or pine squirrel. Native to the Pacific Northwest, the Douglas’s squirrel ( Tamiasciurus douglasii) is a small tree squirrel in the family Sciuridae. “He is, without exception, the wildest animal I ever saw,-a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods’ best juices.” In his 1894 natural history classic, The Mountains of California, John Muir devotes an entire chapter to the Douglas’s squirrel, writing, ![]()
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