Skip to content
Grow In Backyard
Squirrels & Wildlife

Do Squirrels Get Along With Chipmunks? They Tolerate, Mostly

Different niches, overlapping food. Chasing is usually territorial rather than predatory, but grey squirrels do raid chipmunk caches.

By Zakaria 2 min read Save to Pinterest — opens Pinterest in a new tab
A chipmunk sitting upright on a log, facial stripes clearly visible
Photo: BlenderTimer, Pixabay Content License, via Pixabay
On this page

Chipmunks are squirrels, taxonomically, and they mostly stay out of each other’s way. Conflict appears exactly where food is concentrated, which in a garden means the feeder.

Who does what

tree squirrelchipmunk
Foraging layercanopy and groundground and litter
Homedrey or tree cavityburrow
Cachingscatter-hoard, thousands of siteslarder-hoard, one store
Winteractive, no hibernationextended torpor
Size400–600 g70–140 g
Facial stripesnoyes

Why the caching difference matters

scatter-hoardlarder-hoard
Cost of one raidnegligiblepotentially fatal
Memory loadhighlow
Defensiblenoyes, while occupied
Accidental tree plantingyesno

A robbed chipmunk may not survive winter

A chipmunk’s whole winter is one burrow store, eaten during periodic wakings from torpor. Losing it to a squirrel in October is not an inconvenience — there is no time to rebuild before the ground freezes.

In a garden

  • Separate the food sources: a ground tray away from the hanging feeder
  • Expect the squirrel to win any direct contest at a single point
  • Chasing that ends at a boundary is normal and not worth intervening in
  • A chipmunk feeding at the edges is doing what it would do in a wood
  • Concentrating food raises conflict between every species using it

Stripes settle the identification

Chipmunks have facial stripes; ground squirrels of similar size do not. If the stripes run across the face as well as the back, it is a chipmunk.

Common questions

Do squirrels and chipmunks get along?

They coexist without much conflict most of the time, because they use different parts of the same habitat — tree squirrels forage and nest in the canopy, chipmunks work the ground layer and burrow. Competition shows up at shared concentrated food: a feeder, a fallen fruit tree, a nut mast. There the larger grey squirrel dominates and chipmunks feed around the edges or wait.

Why do I see squirrels chasing chipmunks?

Usually resource defence rather than predation. A squirrel that has claimed a feeder or a patch of fallen nuts will drive off anything smaller, and chipmunks are both smaller and direct competitors for the same seeds and nuts. The chase typically ends at the edge of the contested area, which is the signature of territorial behaviour rather than hunting.

Do squirrels kill chipmunks?

It is recorded and it is uncommon. Grey squirrels are opportunistic omnivores that take eggs, nestlings and occasionally small vertebrates, and infanticide and predation on juvenile chipmunks has been documented. It is not a routine part of the relationship, and a chipmunk's main predators are cats, hawks, snakes and foxes rather than squirrels.

Do they raid each other's caches?

Squirrels raid chipmunk stores far more than the reverse. Chipmunks larder-hoard — one large concentrated store in the burrow — which is efficient to defend but catastrophic to lose, whereas squirrels scatter-hoard thousands of single nuts, which is why a raid costs a squirrel almost nothing. A chipmunk that is robbed before winter is in genuine trouble.

Are chipmunks and squirrels related?

Closely — chipmunks are squirrels. They sit in the family Sciuridae alongside tree squirrels, ground squirrels, marmots and prairie dogs. The name difference is vernacular rather than taxonomic. A chipmunk is distinguished by its facial stripes, which ground squirrels of similar size lack, and by its true hibernation-like winter torpor.

Can I feed both without starting fights?

Separating the food sources helps most — a ground tray away from a hanging feeder gives the chipmunk somewhere the squirrel is not standing. Beyond that, concentrating food anywhere raises conflict between every species using it, which is one of the unadvertised costs of feeding garden wildlife at a single point.

Backyard Weekly

Know what to plant, week by week

Join the weekly email for seasonal jobs, fixes for what is going wrong, and gear worth buying.

Not ready to subscribe? The planting calendar is free and needs no email.

By subscribing you agree to our privacy policy. Grow In Backyard will never sell your address.

Keep reading