Rainy Rambles: Douglas fir, meet Douglas squirrel
Published 9:00 am Tuesday, June 13, 2023
- A western hemlock grows next to a Sitka spruce on the Coastal Loop Forest Trail.
Walk through just about any forested area in the Columbia-Pacific region and you’re likely to hear the staccato alarm call of the Douglas squirrel.
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Sounding a bit like a tiny sneeze or a laser gun, the call is often mistaken for that of a bird. These bold little squirrels will often scold people from just a few feet away, so long as they can retreat quickly into the tree canopy. This is how they get their nickname of “chickaree.”
Douglas squirrels are the smallest and most common variety found in the Northwest. They measure about 12 inches, including their long tail.
Their summer coat is quite vivid, gray-brown on top with an orange belly in summer, turning darker and duller during winter. Their ears have small tufts of hair on the ends and they have white rings around their eyes.
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Douglas squirrels are found in from central British Columbia to the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. They primarily live between the coast and the Cascade Mountains.
Sometimes described as being dependent on mature, mixed-conifer forests, local Douglas squirrels may also be found in young shore pine forests, particularly if neighborhoods nearby offer easy sources of food, like bird feeders.
Speaking of food, these little mammals thrive on seeds. If you’ve seen a pile of conifer cone scales at the base of the tree, these are the remnants of a squirrel’s feast.
They’ll also store up cones for the winter. Unfortunately, more than one squirrel has gone hungry because humans stole the cones as an easy source of propagation seeds. While Douglas squirrels also eat fruit, mushrooms and eggs, seeds are their primary food source.
Late spring is baby squirrel season, which means that squirrel parents are busy finding them food to grow on. In spring, up to six kits may be born. It takes them about two months to become independent, though littermates may stay close to each other for a while. Because of the coast’s relatively mild weather, some Douglas squirrels have two litters each year.
The tough reality of nature, though, is that most won’t survive to adulthood. Douglas squirrels are an important part of the diet of many native predators and scavengers, from coyotes and bobcats to hawks and owls. A squirrel will even feed much smaller animals like ants and beetles, themselves important food sources for wildlife.
While the Douglas squirrel is not endangered, our local population faces several threats. The biggest is habitat loss. As forestlands are cut down for timber or development, competition increases for territory. Eventually some leave the area or lack food. The more that habitat is fragmented, the more isolated populations become.
More dangers faced by Douglas squirrels include cars, cats, poisoning and rodent traps. A poisoned squirrel eaten by a scavenger, such as a bald eagle or fox, may lead to the death of that animal as well.
But we can be good neighbors to our local squirrels. It may be tempting to feed them, but doing so encourages them to seek food from humans. This can lead to them becoming injured or killed. A better way to make sure squirrels have enough to eat is to maintain healthy mixed-conifer forests that offer a wide variety of food, seeds and otherwise.
If you have bird feeders, use baffles to prevent these agile little mammals from raiding them. There are also squirrel-proof feeders out there, though many of them also exclude larger birds like Steller’s jays.
Keeping pets and pet food inside also prevents the squirrels and their predators, like coyotes, from hanging around too much.