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KLMN Featured Creature Douglas's Squirrel

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KLMN Featured Creature Douglas's Squirrel National Park Service Featured Creature U.S. Department of the Interior January 2021 Klamath Network Inventory & Monitoring Division Natural Resources Stewardship & Science Douglas’s Squirrel Tamiasciurus douglasii General Description that preserve the seed’s nutrition, for later In his 1894 natural history classic, The access. These storage areas, or middens, are Mountains of California, John Muir devotes often covered in the residue of cone scales an entire chapter to the Douglas’s squirrel, below a favorite eating perch. Not a few tree writing, seedlings have sprouted thanks to forgotten © FRANK LOSPALLUTO seed caches, and early foresters used to raid Douglas’s squirrel “He is, without exception, the wildest animal I these middens for their valuable conifer seeds. ever saw,—a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods’ Douglas’s squirrels also eat bird eggs, flow- while in bluff, audacious noisiness he is a very best juices.” ering plant (angiosperm) parts like berries, jay.” seeds, flowers, and leaf buds, the cambium Native to the Pacific Northwest, the Douglas’s of small branch shoots, and importantly, Reproduction squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii) is a small fungi. Like many squirrels, they feed on the In late winter and early spring, courtship tree squirrel in the family Sciuridae. It’s also reproductive structures of fungi, like mush- begins with a vocal mating chase between called a chickaree or pine squirrel. Distinctly rooms and truffles, sometimes hanging them male and female that forms their monoga- smaller than the western gray squirrel in twig crotches to dry and store for later mous pair bond. An average of 4 naked and (Sciurus griseus) that overlaps its range, the eating. Spread around the forest by Douglas’s blind kits are born after 5–6 weeks of gesta- Douglas’s squirrel has a brownish-gray back, squirrel feces, many of these fungal spores tion. Most young are weaned by 3 months, tawny-orange belly, and a white to tawny connect with plant roots underground in stay with the family a few more months, eye-ring. In summer, a dark line is clearly vast mycorrhizal networks that nourish the and are able to breed during the next year. visible between its abdomen and back, and its plants and soil. Indeed, this squirrel’s taste for Depending on food availability, a second litter winter coat sports small, dark ear tufts. The fungal spores and conifer seeds ties it directly may be born later in the summer. Douglas’s squirrel can grow to 37 cm long (14 to forest health. inches), including its tail. Fun Facts Northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis) and • Squirrel tails are amazingly useful, pro- Habitat and Distribution large owls commonly hunt the Douglas’s viding balance as the squirrel leaps through Douglas’s squirrels live year-round in conifer squirrel, though ground predators, such as the branches, warmth during cold weather, forests of the Pacific Northwest, from British bobcats, weasels, and martens, also eat them. hiding cover, and a way to communicate with Columbia south through western Washington other squirrels and animals. and Oregon, and down into northwestern Behavior • Sharp claws, powerful jumping muscles California and the Sierra Nevada. From Douglas squirrels defend territories year- and hyper-flexible “reversible” hind legs sea level to the subalpine, Douglas’s squir- round, though most intensely in the fall while enable squirrels to nimbly jump around trees rels occupy stands of pine, fir, spruce, and stocking their middens with food. They are and run up and down tree trunks. hemlock, where their favorite foods abound: diurnal—active during the day—and sleep at conifer seeds and fungi. night in tree cavities or in large round leaf and Where to See stick nests, called dreys, built high up in trees. Douglas’s squirrels breed in all Klamath Diet and Predators Network parks. Stripping the outside scales of a cone with One distinctive feature of the Douglas’s squir- their sharp and ever-growing incisor teeth, rel is its volume! This little squirrel makes a More Information Douglas’s squirrels extract their conifer-seed big noise throughout the forest with chatter, https://www.dfw.state.or.us/wildlife/liv- meal from the safety of a tree branch or an rattle calls, screeches, and chirps, variously ing_with/docs/TreeSquirrels.pdf easily escaped ground perch. In the fall, they designed to warn of danger, enhance court- busily prepare for the coming winter, since ship, and argue territory boundaries. Muir Listen to a Douglas’s squirrel: they do not hibernate. Unlike some other writes of the Douglas’s squirrel, https://acousticatlas.org/item/589 squirrels that scatter their food caches all around, Douglas’s squirrels are larder hoard- “He is the mocking-bird of squirrels, pouring Klamath Network ers. They collect seeds and cones in mass forth mixed chatter and song like a perennial Southern Oregon University quantities (thus a “larder”) and bury them in fountain; barking like a dog, screaming like a 1250 Siskiyou Blvd Ashland, OR 97520 moist underground areas or in tree cavities hawk, chirping like a blackbird or a sparrow; THIS EDITION PREPARED BY SONYA DAW EXPERIENCE YOUR AMERICA™ .
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