Katie's Sightings

The Chickaree or Douglas Squirrel

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 adult 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."

Your questions and comments are appreciated. Please feel free to email me at northyubanaturalist@gmail.com. Thanks!