Cheeky Chipmunk, Ontario, Canada
by Venetia Featherstone-Witty
Title
Cheeky Chipmunk, Ontario, Canada
Artist
Venetia Featherstone-Witty
Medium
Photograph - Photographs
Description
Chipmunks are small, striped rodents of the family Sciuridae. Chipmunks are found in North America, with the exception of the Siberian chipmunk which is found primarily in Asia.The common name originally may have been spelled "chitmunk," from the native Odawa (Ottawa) word jidmoonh, meaning "red squirrel" The earliest form cited in the Oxford English Dictionary (from 1842) is "chipmonk," however, "chipmunk" appears in several books from the 1820s and 1830s.Other early forms include "chipmuck" and "chipminck," and in the 1830s they were also referred to as "chip squirrels;" probably in reference to the sound they make. In the mid-1800s, John James Audubon and his sons included a lithograph of the chipmunk in their Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, calling it the "chipping squirrel hackee." Chipmunks have also been referred to as "striped squirrels," "timber tigers," and "ground squirrels" (although the name "ground squirrel" usually refers to other squirrels, such as those of the genus Spermophilus).
Chipmunks have an omnivorous diet primarily consisting of seeds, nuts and other fruits, and buds.They also commonly eat grass, shoots, and many other forms of plant matter, as well as fungi, insects and other arthropods, small frogs, worms, and bird eggs.Around humans, chipmunks can eat cultivated grains and vegetables, and other plants from farms and gardens, so they are sometimes considered pests. Chipmunks mostly forage on the ground, but they climb trees to obtain nuts such as hazelnuts and acorns.At the beginning of autumn, many species of chipmunk begin to stockpile nonperishable foods for winter. They mostly cache their foods in a larder in their burrows and remain in their nests until spring, unlike some other species which make many small caches of food.Cheek pouches allow chipmunks to carry food items to their burrows for either storage or consumption.
FEATURED 10/6/17 in "Animal Photographs"
FEATURED 10/10/17 in "Our 4-Legged Friends"
FEATURED 10/16/17 in "Wildlife One a Day"
Uploaded
October 6th, 2017
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