Washington’s record for the Douglas’s squirrel is one of the deepest in the state atlas, 6,349 records tracing the wet conifer belt from the Olympic Peninsula across Puget Sound and up both flanks of the Cascades. King County alone accounts for 1,412, and the map is anchored by Olympic, Mount Rainier, and North Cascades national parks.
A squirrel built on conifer seed
The Douglas’s squirrel, often called the chickaree, makes its living from the cones of Douglas-fir, spruce, and hemlock, clipping them green and stripping the scales at favored feeding stations that grow into deep middens over the years. That dependence ties it to conifer forest from sea level to timberline, which is exactly where Washington’s records sit, from the Daniel J. Evans Wilderness on the Olympic Peninsula through the Alpine Lakes Wilderness and Ross Lake National Recreation Area, with island outposts at San Juan Islands National Monument and Deception Pass.
Busy in every month
Unlike a ground squirrel, this species does not hibernate. It holds a territory and defends its cone caches straight through the winter, so records appear in all twelve months. Counts climb from June through September, when cones ripen, juveniles strike out on their own, and the squirrels turn loud and conspicuous, then ease back through the short days without ever going quiet.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the Douglas’s squirrel S5, Secure, in Washington, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
