1936] MAMMALS OF OREGOK 125 



tips of branches are cut off, the bark eaten back of the terminal buds 

 or tufts of leaves, and the leaves and peeled sticks dropped to the 

 ground. At times under the pines, especially the lodgepole, the snow 

 or ground will be found carpeted with branch tips thrown down by 

 the squirrels, but the trees seem not to suffer from this occasional 

 pruning. 



Economic status. A closer study of habits is necessary before the 

 economic status of these squirrels, especially in the semiarid forests, 

 is fully determined. Their consumption of tree seeds may well be 

 offset by their habit of planting cones for food, and usually leaving 

 some where they may grow and spread the forest. Their accumula- 

 tions of cones, stored for food, are often levied upon by the forest 

 rangers, to whom the gathering of seeds is an official duty. The 

 squirrels thus win the good will of the Forest Service, but their 

 greatest value is in the life and interest and music with which they 

 fill the forests. 



SCIURUS HUDSONICUS RICHARDSONI BAOHMAN 

 RICHARDSON'S SQUIRREL; BLACK-TAILED SQUIRREL 



Seiurus richardsoni Bachman, Zool. Society London, Proc., p. 100, 1838. 



Type. Collected at head of Big Lost River, Idaho. 



General characters. This is a very dark form of the red squirrel group, 

 with always white belly and mainly black tail. Summer coat, upper parts dark 

 rusty gray, ear tufts and legs rusty ; stripe along side black ; tail mainly clear 

 black, dark gray centrally toward base; lower parts white. Winter coat, back 

 and top of tail deep rufous; sides rusty gray with trace of black stripe; ear 

 tufts black; long brush and sides of tail black, sometimes slightly edged with 

 rusty ; feet gray ; lower parts white or slightly grizzled. 



Measurements. Total length, 340 mm; tail, 130; foot, 52; ear (dry), 22. 



Distribution and habitat. From the mountains of Idaho these 

 squirrels extend across into the Blue Mountains of Oregon where 

 they occupy the pine and spruce forests north of the John Day River 

 Valley, almost if not quite meeting the range of albolimbatus, but 

 showing no trace of intergradation (fig. 20). They occupy the for- 

 ests from timber line down through the yellow pines, at times even 

 coming down to the willows and cottonwoods along the stream val- 

 leys. Their greatest abundance, however, seems to be in the spruces 

 and lodgepole pines of Canadian Zone. 



General habits. No marked peculiarities of habits distinguish 

 these Rocky Mountain squirrels from the yellow-bellied forms of 

 western Oregon, and one cannot be sure of a difference in the voices 

 of any of the whole red-squirrel group. They are all the same 

 bright, active, little forest singers, at times bold and impudent, and 

 again shy and wary. Their long chr-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r, whether given 

 from the top of a spruce tree on a mild morning in September, or 

 from a snowy branch above the deep crusts in January, is always a 

 happy song, but with many shades of pitch and tone that probably 

 mean more to the squirrel tribe than to our coarser ears. A great 

 variety of barking and scolding, chattering, arid talking notes may 

 be mere expression of feeling, but more probably have definite mean- 

 ings to themselves. 



The old squirrels are mainly solitary in habits, each occupving 

 and vigorously defending the section of forest where his nest, food, 



