If something in the treetops is scolding you on a Mt. Hood trail, it is probably a Douglas’s squirrel. This small tree squirrel, also called the chickaree, fills the conifer forest with chatters, rattles, screeches and chirps that warn of danger, help with courtship and settle arguments over territory. John Muir, who wrote a whole chapter about it, considered it the wildest animal he had ever met.
Douglas’s squirrels live mainly on conifer seeds and fungi. A squirrel sits on a branch or stump and strips the scales off a cone to reach the seeds, and over time the scales pile up into a heap called a midden. Instead of scattering its food around the forest, it stockpiles cones and seeds in one place, burying them in damp ground or stuffing them into tree cavities, since it stays active all winter and does not hibernate. Forgotten caches can sprout into seedlings, and the fungal spores it spreads in its droppings help link tree roots to the underground fungal networks that feed them.
Look for it year-round in forests of fir, hemlock, pine and spruce, from low elevations to the subalpine. A midden at the foot of a favorite feeding perch is a good clue that one lives nearby.
How to identify it
A small tree squirrel, up to about 14 inches long including the tail, with a brownish gray to olive back, a tawny-orange belly and a pale eye ring. In summer a dark stripe runs along each side between back and belly, and in winter it grows small dark ear tufts.
Look-alikes
The western gray squirrel, which overlaps its range, is distinctly bigger. Douglas's squirrel is the small, orange-bellied squirrel of the conifer forest.
Habitat
Conifer forests of fir, hemlock, pine and spruce, from sea level to the subalpine. In Oregon it ranges from the coast east to western Baker County, and it is active by day all year.
Sightings in the forest
244 research-grade sightings in Mt. Hood National Forest on iNaturalist, most recently on October 17, 2026. See them on iNaturalist →