Daily Updates
First Eastern Chipmunks, Field Courses Looking Great - UPDATE April 4, 2016
04 April 2016
This morning about 9 AM with the temperature a 9?F, I saw my first chipmunk for this year, a female Eastern Eastern chipmunk with leaves
Eastern chipmunk gathering leaves
Chipmunk (Tamias striatus). She was gathering leaves from snow-free spots for bedding. Large leaves got crumpled as she used her front feet to stuff them into her mouth and cheek pouches (photo to the left). Then she dove into her burrow that was still surrounded by snow (photo below). I wondered if the bedding was for her young that will be born in early May after a gestation period of about a month. The entrance was so inconspicuous that I?d never noticed it. An old entrance clogged with snow was just a foot away. Burrows can have multiple entrances. Adult females are the ones most likely to use the same burrow system year after year. They store food in the burrow for winter and don?t accumulate fat like ground squirrels do, according to The Smithsonian Book of North American Mammals (1999). In winter, they wake up periodically, raise the body temperature to normal, and sleep normally (not hibernating) for a few days, waking up to eat stored food, urinate, and defecate. To learn how hibernation differs for chipmunks and black bears, visit
http://www.bear.org/website/bear-pages/black-bear/hibernation/189-how-do-chipmunk-and-black-bear-hibernation-differ.html.
By 5 PM, the temperature was 35?F and she was being chased around by a male. Mating season is now when they?re just emerging. She wasn?t letting herself get caught, though, so it apparently was not her day of estrus. Eastern chipmunk going down hole
Eastern chipmunk going down hole
Assuming that she mates soon, gives birth in a month, and nurses the young for six weeks, we could be seeing her litter above ground near the end of the nursing period in mid June.
Last year, the first bear sighting here was April 17, less than 2 weeks away. Excitement grows. We especially will be looking for old favorites like One-eyed Jack, Big Harry, Burt, Pete, Crackle, and Guy?all 11-20+ years old. All are very trusting in this location but are so wary in the woods that we never see them, or hear of them being seen, which may be why they survive to these ages. We have never heard of a bear complaint about any of them.
WRI brochureWe will also be looking for Shadow (the matriarch of the clan), who should have turned 29 in January.
Mothers we expect to have cubs are always cause for anticipation. This year, mothers with cubs will almost certainly include 17-year-old RC, 7-year-old Jewel (known to have at least two), 7-year-old Samantha, 7-year-old Summer, 5-year-old Daisy, 4-year-old Fern, and 4-year-old Sophie, plus non-clan mothers, Kimani and Annie.
A dozen other young females, some of them not often seen here, turn 3, 4, or 5 this year and could also have cubs. Throughout the community, other households that feed bears will be reporting sightings, so we can take Bear Course participants there in addition to seeing the families that come here.
A brochure about the Black Bear Field Courses can be seen by clicking here for the outside and here for the inside. For printing purposes you can download a high resolution version by clicking here for the hi-res outside and here for the hi-res inside. Thirteen slots are still open at
http://www.bearstudy.org/website/field-study-courses.html. There is nothing in the legislature that will prevent close encounters, and from what we hear the hand-feeding language will be removed. Looking forward to great Field Courses this year and hoping they will continue next year and beyond, but the future is hard to predict.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
Author
Topic: Jewel and her cubs (Read 2359574 times)