Douglas Squirrel/Chickaree -Tamiasciurus douglasii
Last week I wrote about an amazing sighting of a Douglas Squirrel/Chickaree carrying its babies to a new nest. I'm happy to report that the babies are just fine! It appears that they are almost full grown and capable of feeding themselves! They are scampering up and down the trunk of the locust tree where their new nest is, as well as nearby trees, and occasionally stopping to eat a seed or tree bud. It's really fun watching them chase each other, and zip up-down-and-around the trees at high speed.
The recently moved young Douglas Squirrels/Chickarees
Tamiasciurus douglasii
Douglas Squirrels/Chickarees mate in late winter and early spring. They are monogamous, and have only one mate per season. After 5-6 weeks of gestation, 1-8 altricial (naked and blind) kits are born. The average litter size is 4. The kits' eyes open after 26-36 days. Kits stay in the nest for approximately 3 months, until they are weaned and half to two-thirds their normal size. Only the mother takes care of the young. The weaned kits continue to stay with their family a few more months. Depending on food availability, a second litter may be born later in the summer.
The recently moved young Douglas Squirrels/Chickarees
Tamiasciurus douglasii
Douglas Squirrels/Chickarees have a body length of 10.6"-14", a tail length of 4"-6", and a weight of 5-13 ounces. They are incredible athletes and acrobats, and are constantly jumping from one branch to another, climbing up trunks, or running along a phone line! They run so fast that I can hardly get a photo that isn't blurred!
Douglas Squirrel/Chickaree -Tamiasciurus douglasii
John Muir wrote a whole chapter (Chapter 9 - The Douglas Squirrel) about these squirrels in his 1894 book "The Mountains of California". It is a delightful account of these energetic, charming, little squirrels. I've copied excerpts from his book below. To read the whole chapter just click on this link https://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_mountains_of_california/chapter_9.aspx
"He is the squirrel of squirrels, flashing from branch to branch of his favorite evergreens crisp and glossy and un-diseased as a sunbeam. Give him wings and he would outfly any bird in the woods. His big gray cousin is a looser animal, seemingly light enough to float on the wind; yet when leaping from limb to limb, or out of one tree-top to another, he sometimes halts to gather strength, as if making efforts concerning the upshot of which he does not always feel exactly confident. But the Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength, seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream. He threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty trunks; getting into what seem to be the most impossible situations without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his head; yet ever graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy with little dots and dashes of perfect repose."
Douglas Squirrel/Chickaree -Tamiasciurus douglasii
"No other of the Sierra animals of my acquaintance is better fed, not even the deer, amid abundance of sweet herbs and shrubs, or the mountain sheep, or omnivorous bears. His food consists of grass-seeds, berries, hazel-nuts, chinquapins, and the nuts and seeds of all the coniferous trees without exception,--Pine, Fir, Spruce, Libocedrus, Juniper, and Sequoia,--he is fond of them all, and they all agree with him, green or ripe. No cone is too large for him to manage, none so small as to be beneath his notice. The smaller ones, such as those of the Hemlock, and the Douglas Spruce, and the Two-leaved Pine, he cuts off and eats on a branch of the tree, without allowing them to fall; beginning at the bottom of the cone and cutting away the scales to expose the seeds; not gnawing by guess, like a bear, but turning them round and round in regular order, in compliance with their spiral arrangement."
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Douglas Squirrel/Chickaree -Tamiasciurus douglasii
"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. One can hardly think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest of us, on climate and food. But, after all, it requires no long acquaintance to learn he is human, for he works for a living. His busiest time is in the Indian summer. Then he gathers burs and hazelnuts like a plodding farmer, working continuously every day for hours; saying not a word; cutting off the ripe cones at the top of his speed, as if employed by the job, and examining every branch in regular order, as if careful that not one should escape him; then, descending, he stores them away beneath logs and stumps, in anticipation of the pinching hunger days of winter. He seems himself a kind of coniferous fruit,--both fruit and flower."
"Go where you will throughout the noble woods of the Sierra Nevada, among the giant pines and spruces of the lower zones, up through the towering Silver Firs to the storm-bent thickets of the summit peaks, you everywhere find this little squirrel the master-of-existence. Though only a few inches long, so intense is his fiery vigor and restlessness, he stirs every grove with wild life, and makes himself more important than even the huge bears that shuffle through the tangled underbrush beneath him. Every wind is fretted by his voice, almost every bole and branch feels the sting of his sharp feet. How much the growth of the trees is stimulated by this means it is not easy to learn, but his action in manipulating their seeds is more appreciable. Nature has made him master forester and committed most of her coniferous crops to his paws. Probably over fifty per cent. of all the cones ripened on the Sierra are cut off and handled by the Douglas alone, and of those of the Big Trees perhaps ninety per cent. pass through his hands: the greater portion is of course stored away for food to last during the winter and spring, but some of them are tucked separately into loosely covered holes, where some of the seeds germinate and become trees."
A New Arrival!
To my delight an adult non-breeding Western Meadowlark was up near the Open Slope in my neighborhood this week! It is probably just passing through on it's way to its winter habitat in California's Central Valley or foothills, or even as far south as Mexico. Right now they don't have their breeding "colors" but are still beautiful! The male and female adults are monomorphic (look the same). They both become way more colorful during the breeding season (see photo below).
Grizzly Peak and morning clouds
We had a lot of beautiful clouds pass by this week, and we even got a few sprinkles, but no measurable rain! Rain is in the forecast for the next few days. My fingers are crossed!
Late blooming Sneezeweed - Helenium bigeloviiWhat's happening in the Lakes Basin?
What other birds going to pass through our neighborhood on their way "south"?
Check back next week for the answers to these questions and more!
Your questions and comments are greatly appreciated!
Please email me at northyubanaturalist@gmail.com.
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