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Where Do Chipmunks Sleep? Inside a Burrow You Never See

Chipmunks sleep in a nest chamber deep in a burrow system with a hidden entrance. How the tunnels are built, and what they do through the winter.

By Zakaria 2 min read Save to Pinterest — opens Pinterest in a new tab
A chipmunk looking out from a burrow entrance dug into bare earth under leaf litter
Photo: Chris F, Pexels License, via Pexels
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Underground, every night, in a chamber you will almost certainly never find — because chipmunks deliberately hide the entrance and carry the spoil away.

What the burrow looks like

Chipmunk burrow against what people expect
ChipmunkMoleGrey squirrel
SleepsUndergroundUndergroundIn a tree drey
Entrance~2 in, no moundRaised molehills—
Depth2–3 ft to the nestShallow runs + deeper chambers—
SpoilCarried away in cheek pouchesPushed to the surface—
WinterTorpor bouts, on a stored cacheActive all winterActive, caches outside

That last row of the second column is the identification tip that matters: a chipmunk hole has no soil around it. If there is a mound, you are looking at something else.

The winter arrangement

Chipmunks are the reason “hibernation” gets explained badly. They do not put on a fat layer and sleep from October to March:

  • Torpor in bouts — body temperature and heart rate drop for a few days at a time
  • Then they wake and eat from the seed chambers in the burrow
  • Then back under, repeating through the cold months
  • On mild days one may come out briefly

This is the whole reason for the frantic autumn hoarding and the visibly stuffed cheek pouches. They are stocking a pantry, not building a body. A chipmunk that fails to cache enough does not simply sleep through the shortfall.

When the burrow is a problem

Usually it is not — a chipmunk tunnel in a border is harmless and the animal eats a lot of insects and weed seed along the way. Two cases are worth attention:

Burrows against foundations, retaining walls and patios

Extensive tunnelling under a footing, a wall base or a slab can wash out fill over a few seasons. That is a structural issue rather than a pest one, and it is the situation where filling holes and excluding the animal is justified.

Everywhere else, the sensible answer is to remove what attracts them — spilled birdseed under a feeder, fallen fruit, accessible pet food — rather than to go after the burrow.

Common questions

Where do chipmunks sleep?

In a nest chamber inside an underground burrow, usually two to three feet down and lined with dry leaves and grass. The chamber sits off a tunnel system that can run twenty to thirty feet with several side chambers used for storing seed. Chipmunks are strictly daytime animals, so they are in the burrow every night, and they sleep there alone — adults are solitary outside the brief breeding season.

Do chipmunks sleep in trees?

Very rarely. Chipmunks climb well and will go up shrubs and trees to feed, and a few have been recorded using tree cavities, but the burrow is the normal home. This is the clearest behavioural split between chipmunks and squirrels: squirrels nest above ground in dreys and cavities, chipmunks nest below it.

How deep is a chipmunk burrow?

The nest chamber usually sits two to three feet below the surface, with tunnels running twenty to thirty feet horizontally and sometimes considerably further. The entrance is about two inches across and deliberately inconspicuous — chipmunks carry the excavated soil away in their cheek pouches rather than leaving a mound, so there is no telltale spoil heap the way there is with a mole or a vole.

Do chipmunks hibernate?

Not in the deep, continuous way a groundhog does. Chipmunks enter torpor in bouts through winter, dropping their body temperature and heart rate for a few days at a time, then waking to eat from the seed cache stored in the burrow before going back under. That is why they hoard so obsessively in autumn — they do not build a fat layer to live off, they build a larder. On mild winter days you may see one out briefly.

Where do chipmunks go at night?

Straight back to the burrow. Chipmunks are diurnal, most active in the couple of hours after sunrise and again in the late afternoon, and they are underground from dusk to dawn. A small striped rodent running around your garden after dark is much more likely to be a rat or a mouse.

How do I find a chipmunk burrow in my garden?

Look for a clean round hole about two inches across with no soil mound around it, often tucked against a wall, a log pile, a rockery, a shed base or the edge of a patio slab. Because there is no spoil heap and no obvious path, they are easy to miss entirely. A burrow near a foundation or retaining wall is the one worth caring about, since extensive tunnelling can undermine the footing over time.

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