| Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels are familiar residents of open woodlands, brushy forest-edge habitats, dry margins of mountain meadows, and rocky slopes. They are quick to invade sunny, disturbed areas where pioneer plants provide good food resources. Because they have a stripe on the flank, they are sometimes mistaken for chipmunks, but the stripe does not continue onto the cheek as it does in Tamias species. Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels are solitary burrow-dwellers. They eat almost anything, including fungi, a variety of plants, fruits, and seeds, insects in all life-cycle stages, nestling birds and eggs, small mammals, and carrion. They hibernate from late summer through early spring, and like other hibernating mammals, put on fat reserves beforehand.
Length:
Average:
275 mm
Range:
245-295 mm
Weight:
Range:
175-350 g
References:
Say, T., 1823. in Thwaites, R.G., (ed.) Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 : A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best and rarest contemporary volumes of travel : descriptive of the Aborigines and Social and Economic Conditions in the Middle and Far West, during the Period of Early American Settlement, Cleveland, Ohio : A.H. Clark Co., Cleveland, Ohio, 1904-1907. Volume 16 (“Part III of James's Account of S. H. Long's Expedition, 1819-1820”), pg 38.
(Accessible on-line at the Library of Congress - enter page 38)
Links:
Mammal Species of the World
Click here for The American Society of Mammalogists species account
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