Yellow-pine chipmunk

Description:

The body is reddish brown, mixed with cinnamon, with five longitudinal dark (black or mixed black) stripes that are separated by four lighter stripes. The outer pair of pale stripes is creamy white and narrower, and the more median pair is a gray or smoke gray. The sides of the head each have three dark stripes, with two lighter in between, and the crown is black or smoke gray.

Habitat:

Spotted in a pine forest in the Cascade foothills west of Ronald, Wa. Range is Southern British Columbia to Northern California and East to western Montana and Wyoming.

Notes:

Yellow-pine chipmunks are seed-storing hibernators whose fitness in winter and spring seasons is influenced by the availability of resources and their foraging behaviors in the summer and autumn. Since they do not build body fat before hibernation, their larder, or winter food supply they have built, serves as a measure for their likelihood of survival through the winter, and of their reproductive success come spring.