Gray-footed chipmunks live in the same narrow slice of far west Texas mountain country their record locations suggest. Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks hold the oak-pine and pinyon-juniper woodland this species needs, rocky, wooded slopes far from the state’s flatter, drier majority. It’s a day-active forager, out gathering seeds and acorns while most desert mammals wait for dusk.
Texas records climb through late winter and spring, peak in April, then fall off almost to nothing by midsummer and stay there through fall. That’s a plausible pattern for a mountain squirrel that keeps a lower profile once the heat sets in, but the swing says more about when people were out looking than about how many chipmunks are there. Texas’s state rank of S2, imperiled, is worth noting too. This chipmunk is far less secure here at the edge of its range than its “least concern” global status implies.
