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Small Animals

These ubiquitous rodents inhabit the ground, the trees, perhaps even your attic, and represent a fair percentage of local roadkill. A recent squirrel census reported 178 million squirrels in the Tahoe Basin.

California Ground Squirrel These squirrels have large bodies like the gray squirrels but have much smaller tails. They have a mottled brown coat and a silver saddle over the shoulder. They spend most of their time on the ground and are very busy all summer getting fattened up to hibernate through the winter.

Chickaree or Douglas Squirrel This medium-sized dark brown squirrel has a reddish tinge on its back, a white belly, and a bushy tail with a silver tip. Chickarees stay active all winter and make a short explosive quer-o sound.

If you hear fir cones crashing down to the ground, and see the mangled remnants of the soft cones sitting on a stump, you will know you are in chickaree country. These squirrels love to climb trees and drop the cones for later, when they remove the entire cone, piece by piece, in order to get to the tasty seeds inside.