Douglas’s ground squirrel is a large ground squirrel with a long, fairly bushy tail. Its fur is sandy brown to grayish brown sprinkled with silvery white spots, with a dark patch between pale silvery shoulders and a white ring around each eye. For many years it was treated as part of the California ground squirrel, and Oregon’s wildlife agency still uses that name. Genetic studies have since supported treating it as its own species, with the Sacramento River in California as the rough dividing line.
These squirrels live in colonies and dig large burrow systems used for shelter, food storage, raising young and winter rest. A dirt mound at the entrance often serves as a lookout. Adult males act as sentries and give a loud chirp when a predator appears. Hawks, eagles, owls, ravens, coyotes, foxes, bobcats and snakes all hunt them.
They eat mostly seeds, grasses and other plants, nuts and acorns, and they spend the coldest months underground in torpor. They also climb well and sun themselves on stumps, rocks, fence posts and even trees.
In the forest, look for them in burns, clear-cuts and grassy openings, not in old-growth stands.
How to identify it
A large ground squirrel with a long, fairly bushy tail. The back is gray-brown speckled with buffy to silvery white spots, with a dark, roughly triangular patch between pale silvery shoulders and a white eye ring. Often seen sitting upright on a burrow mound or perched on a post, stump or boulder.
Look-alikes
When it climbs it can be mistaken for a tree squirrel, but its tail is less full and its back is speckled with pale spots.
Habitat
Open, dry ground with soil for burrows: grassy openings, pastures, open oak and pine woodland, burns and clear-cuts. In Oregon it ranges along the coast and the Cascades and east into the Great Basin, from sea level to over 6,500 feet, but it avoids old-growth conifer forest.
Photos
Sightings in the forest
192 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on October 31, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →