THE MAMMALS OF NEW JERSEY. 81 
Genus Tamas Illiger. 
Chipmunks. 
Fossorial squirrels intermediate between the true squirrels and 
the spermophiles though more closely related to the latter. 
Tamias striatus (Linneus). 
Chipmunk, Striped Squirrel, Groundhackee. 
PLATE 35. 
Length 9.50 inches. Head brown, back grizzled gray, rump 
and hind legs rufous chestnut, a narrow black stripe down the 
middle of the back from the ears to the rump, and on each side a 
light buff stripe bordered with black, sides of body buffy, below 
white. Tail grizzly gray above with black tips to the hairs, below 
rufous edged with black. 
This is the most familiar and most confiding of our smaller 
mammals, its diurnal habits making it easy to see while it lingers 
close to man’s habitations as long as suitable surroundings are to 
be found. The chipmunk is a harmless little animal, doing little 
or no damage to crops or gardens and living on wild nuts, berries, 
roots and occasionally insects of various sorts. In fall they are 
especially noticeable in the vicinity of nut trees and may be seen 
scampering away with their cheeks stuffed with nuts which are 
hidden away in their storehouses for later use. The burrows of 
the chipmunk are inconspicuous from the fact that we rarely find 
any earth about the openings such as mark the entrances to the 
woodchucks’ galleries. Apparently all the exhumed earth is care- 
fully carried away and deposited at some distance from the opera- 
tion. In the depth of winter the chipmunks hibernate in their 
nests underground, but they are not so completely torpid as some 
other species and are occasionally to be seen even in mid-winter. 
When alarmed a chipmunk will bolt for his burrow and shoot 
into it uttering a shrill cry as he goes down, often returning im- 
6 MU 
