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What Do Chipmunks Eat? Seeds, Nuts, and a Lot Else

Chipmunks are omnivores hoarding seeds and nuts in cheek pouches — plus insects, eggs and fungi. What to feed them, what harms them, and why they dig your pots.

By The Grow In Backyard Team 3 min read Save to Pinterest — opens Pinterest in a new tab
A chipmunk with both cheek pouches packed full
Photo: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Chipmunks are omnivores and hoarders, and both halves of that matter. The diet is far broader than the seed-eating image suggests, and the hoarding explains nearly all of their behaviour around a garden.

The actual diet

The bulk: seeds, nuts, acorns, beechmast, berries, fungi, buds and grain.

Also, regularly: insects, worms, snails, slugs, birds’ eggs, nestlings, small frogs, and carrion.

That last group surprises people. A chipmunk is not a vegetarian — it takes protein whenever it is available, and nest raiding is part of the picture in spring.

Fungi matter more than you would guess. Chipmunks eat and spread mycorrhizal fungi, which form the root partnerships that trees depend on. They are doing real ecological work while digging your pots — which is much of why they are not really bad to have around until one burrows under something structural.

Hoarding is the key behaviour

Squirrels scatter-hoard — thousands of small buried caches.

Chipmunks larder-hoard — one central store, in the burrow.

This is why a chipmunk visits the same feeder again and again in quick succession: it is not eating, it is transporting. Cheek pouches hold a genuinely remarkable volume relative to body size, and a chipmunk can move a large quantity of seed in an afternoon.

It also explains the autumn frenzy, and why they are unbothered by depleting a feeder.

Safe and unsafe

If you feed them
Safe, in moderationAvoid
Raw unsalted almonds, walnuts, hazelnutsAnything salted, roasted or seasoned
Raw sunflower and pumpkin seedsChocolate — toxic
Grapes, apple, berriesBread and processed food
Carrot, cucumber, leafy greensDairy — they are lactose intolerant
Corn, occasionallyPeanuts as a staple — bone disease

The peanut problem applies here too

Peanuts are legumes with a calcium-to-phosphorus ratio that is wrong for small rodents. Occasional is fine; as a staple they cause metabolic bone disease, which wildlife rehabilitators see routinely in heavily fed populations.

Why they dig your pots

Two reasons, both fixable:

Caching. A pot of loose soil is ideal storage.

Bulbs. Tulips and crocus are food. Daffodils, alliums and fritillaries are not — they are left alone almost entirely.

Fixes:

  • Cover the soil surface — hardware cloth cut to the pot, decorative gravel, large pebbles, or pine cones laid on top.
  • Plant bulbs they ignore.
  • Clear spilled bird seed, which is what draws them in to begin with.
  • Lay wire mesh over bulb beds at planting, removed in spring.

The burrow

Twenty to thirty feet of tunnel, with separate chambers for sleeping, food storage and waste.

The entrance is usually a neat two-inch hole with no soil mound — because they carry excavated earth away in their cheek pouches specifically to avoid advertising the entrance.

That absence of a mound is the quickest way to tell a chipmunk burrow from a rat hole or a vole run.

They do not truly hibernate. They enter torpor and wake periodically through winter to eat from the larder, which is why the autumn hoarding is so intense and why you occasionally see one on a mild winter day.

Common questions

What do chipmunks eat?

Chipmunks are omnivores. The bulk of the diet is seeds, nuts, acorns, berries and fungi, but they also take insects, worms, snails, birds' eggs, nestlings and small frogs. Their cheek pouches let them carry large quantities back to a burrow larder, and unlike squirrels they hoard centrally rather than burying food in scattered caches — which is why a chipmunk makes many trips to the same feeder.

Can chipmunks eat almonds?

Raw, unsalted almonds in small amounts are fine and are taken readily. Avoid anything salted, roasted or flavoured. Bitter almonds should not be offered at all, since they contain compounds that release cyanide. As with squirrels, nuts should be a supplement rather than the diet — a chipmunk living mainly on offered nuts misses the insects and greens it would otherwise eat.

Can chipmunks eat grapes?

Yes, and they like them. Grapes are safe in moderation and are a useful water source in hot weather — unlike for dogs, there is no known toxicity for chipmunks. Keep quantities small, since the sugar content is high relative to their size, and remember that fruit in a garden will be taken whether you offer it or not.

How do you keep chipmunks out of flower pots?

Cover the soil surface so they cannot dig. Hardware cloth cut to the pot shape, a layer of decorative gravel or large pebbles, or pine cones laid on the surface all work. They dig to cache food and to reach bulbs, so removing bird-feeder spillage nearby helps, and planting daffodils, alliums or fritillaries rather than tulips and crocus removes the target entirely.

Do chipmunks burrow in the ground?

Extensively. A chipmunk burrow can run twenty to thirty feet with multiple chambers for sleeping, food storage and waste, usually with a well-hidden main entrance and no soil mound — they carry excavated earth away in their cheek pouches to avoid advertising it. That is why the entrance often looks like a neat two-inch hole with nothing around it.

What should you not feed chipmunks?

Anything salted, roasted or seasoned, bread and processed food, chocolate, and dairy. As with squirrels, peanuts are a poor staple — they are legumes, low in calcium relative to phosphorus, and a diet dominated by them causes metabolic bone disease. Feeding at all concentrates chipmunks near houses, and they burrow near foundations, so there is a practical argument against it as well.

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