Backyard Wildlife Drama, with Chipmunk (Shallow Thoughts)
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Backyard Wildlife Drama, with Chipmunk
This year, we've been lucky enough to have a chipmunk hanging around our garden. I feed a lot of birdseed on the ground or a platform feeder: most of the birds here seem to prefer ground-scattered seed to hanging seed feeders. Sometimes the ground feeding backfires: this year I'm buying seed at a furious rate because a flock of about 25 mourning doves have discovered our yard. I thought I liked mourning doves, which in recent years have seemed to be losing out to the larger white-winged and Eurasian collared doves ... but 25 is really too much of a good thing.Where was I? Oh, yes, chipmunks. Usually they prefer the canyon's edge, about a mile away; we get rock squirrels here, but no tree squirrels and seldom chipmunks. So we were very happy when one took up residence here earlier this spring and became a regular visitor to our seed station, as well as running along the brick wall outside my office.
On a recent evening, we heard repeated loud chirps from outside the home office window that I didn't recognize as any of the common local birds. It turned out to be the chipmunk, chipping while flicking its tail up and down. The local version of "chip tunes"! (Vertical tail movements apparently confirm an ID of Least Chipmunk, Neotamias minimus.)
Tags: nature, chipmunks[ 18:02 May 27, 2021 More nature | permalink to this entry | ]
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