Eastern Chipmunk

Here's an Eastern Chipmunk I met last autumn. The little guy was near a hollow log though it's unlikely the chipmunk lives there. Despite being skilled tree climbers, chipmunks like to live in burrows in the ground consisting of several tunnels. (It's possible there's a tunnel entrance under the log, I suppose.)

Chipmunks are omnivores that primarily eat vegetation but will eat some invertebrates and even bird eggs and small bird hatchlings.

It's a little difficult to describe how they spend the winter. Some sources have said they're too small to store enough body fat to hibernate through a winter, while others say they are hibernators. Maybe the key is that sometimes the term hibernation means essentially sleeping through the winter and sometimes means hunkering down in a den with food and periodically eating a meal. My guess is that Eastern Chipmunks hibernate in the sense that they mostly sleep but occasionally snack during the winter.

November 4, 2021 at the Schiff Nature Preserve
Photo 169043317, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)




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