I hesitated with the title of this post since this is clearly a ground squirrel and not a chipmunk, but I grew up in the east and when at dinner I stuffed my cheeks the way this squirrel has, they told me I had “chipmunk cheeks”.
Like that was a bad thing.
To the casual observer, a golden-mantled ground squirrel might appear to be part of the chipmunk family given the light-and-dark stripes that run the length of its body, but it is, you might have guessed, a ground squirrel. Even with a quick glance, you can tell the difference as in chipmunks the stripes extend into the face, while in ground squirrels they do not.
When I reached the top of the Pinnacle Peak Trail, this bold golden-mantled ground squirrel hoped I would offer up some of my food, and when I did not, tried to help himself.
I did eventually shoo the little thief away, not because it was being aggressive, but because its constant movements were kicking fine dirt onto my camera bag and I didn’t want to risk it also getting on my camera gear and gumming up the lenses. I saw many ground squirrels on this trip, even on trails more popular than this one, and even on this trail just a short distance away, yet this is the only one that approached me offering to lighten my load.
When I saw that I could photograph this marmot against the brown background, I prayed that the heavy winds would bring cloud cover to soften the afternoon light, but alas it was not to be. I’d get some occasional clouds later in the day but by then the marmot was long gone.
You can’t have everything. ;)
Back in the fall I spent the afternoon watching the large colony of marmots at the end of the Summerland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park, but it wasn’t until the tail end of my day that I spotted this youngster, the only young one I saw on the day. It was so much smaller than the other marmots that I’d guess that it had been born in the spring and was about to face its first winter.
As the sun disappeared behind the mountains, some of the marmots started to head up towards what I assume was their home in the rocks above the trail. When the little one jumped down to follow, it landed on an unstable rock that crashed loudly onto the rocks below. The other marmots rose and froze to attention while the youngster sprinted up and away. I’m so jealous of how marmots speed across a jumbled talus field compared to my slow plodding even on the open trail that it was nice to see that even they occasionally put a foot wrong.