GEOUND SQUIEEELS 167 



animals do leave the ground, however, and ascend shrubs and low trees 

 for especially desirable provender. In Yosemite Valley, Mrs, Joseph 

 Grinnell reports that ground squirrels were gathering the green fruits 

 from the top of a 4-foot manzanita bush. At Pleasant Valley we occasion- 

 ally saw them in low oaks, evidently after acorns; and at El Portal one 

 squirrel was found with three of the large acorns of the Golden Oak, two 

 in one cheek pouch and one in the other. At Snelling, in January, they 

 were eating the coarse fruits of the osage orange, which abounds there 

 as a hedgerow plant ; torn remnants of these fruits were scattered about 

 the entrances of the burrows. But the ground squirrel is not entirely 

 restricted to a vegetable diet, as is shown by the fact that it is regularly 

 captured in meat-baited traps set for skunks and other carnivorous animals. 



Mr. E. W. Baker, formerly resident in Yosemite Valley, has told us that 

 the ground squirrels about Yosemite Village would, in the fall, come and 

 fill their cheek pouches with acorns and then go off and store them in some 

 safe place for the winter or spring when food would be scarce. He says 

 that the present species, like the gray squirrel, is not averse to stealing 

 young birds. He has seen a California Ground Squirrel carry off a young 

 Western Robin, and he has received report of their capturing young 

 chickens in yards on the floor of the Valley. Numerous visitors to the 

 Valley during the summer months establish feeding tables to attract the 

 birds about their camps, and many of these persons find that ground 

 squirrels give more or less trouble. At first exceedingly shy, the squirrels 

 soon become bold and eventually have to be driven away in order that the 

 birds may have the benefit of the proffered food. 



In the lowlands the majority of the young ground squirrels are born 

 in April and May, and by the middle of May some are beginning to appear 

 with their mothers, playing about the mouths of the burrows; but in the 

 higher altitudes the young are born later. Two half-grown young were 

 seen on May 17, 1919, in Yosemite Valley, but in other years some of the 

 females in the Transition Zone and lower part of the Canadian Zone had 

 not yet given birth to their young by the first week in June. 'Spring' in 

 the lowlands comes in April and early May, while the 'spring' of the higher 

 altitudes does not occur until late June or July. Hence the young do 

 appear at the same season, considering the differences in temperature 

 conditions at the different elevations. 



The annual molt takes place in mid-summer. With the advent of the 

 new pelage, the white areas on the sides of the head and neck become more 

 conspicuous and the pepper-and-salt effect resulting from the banded 

 coloration of the individual hairs is more in evidence. As time goes on 

 the freshness of the coat is lost by wear against the sides of the burrow 

 and in other ways. The brown overwash which the new pelage possesses 



