Do Chipmunks Live in Trees or on the Ground?

Chipmunks are fundamentally ground-dwelling animals whose lives center on underground burrow systems, but they regularly climb trees to forage, escape danger, and sometimes even nest. Calling them purely terrestrial undersells how much time they spend off the ground, yet calling them arboreal would be flat-out wrong. The reality is a dual lifestyle that shifts with the species, the season, and the landscape around them.

The Burrow Is Home Base

If you want to understand where a chipmunk really lives, look underground. A chipmunk’s burrow is its bedroom, pantry, nursery, and bomb shelter all in one. Eastern chipmunks individually occupy a burrow that functions as a hibernation den, a place to raise pups, a food cache, and a refuge from predators and bad weather.¹ Chipmunks are not casual about where they dig, either. They strongly prefer sloped terrain and spots with fallen logs, and they’re more likely to move into an existing vacant burrow and expand it than to start from scratch.

Burrow entrances are famously inconspicuous. Unlike a groundhog’s mound, a chipmunk entrance is usually a small, clean hole with no pile of excavated soil around it. Chipmunks carry the dirt away in their cheek pouches and scatter it elsewhere. Inside, the tunnel system can extend several meters and include multiple chambers for sleeping, food storage, and waste. The result is an underground home that’s surprisingly complex for an animal that weighs less than a deck of cards.

This underground lifestyle is not optional. Chipmunks hibernate in their burrows through winter, dropping their heart rate and body temperature dramatically. Without a well-insulated, below-ground chamber, they would not survive the cold months in temperate climates. So while a chipmunk may spend hours each day above ground, the burrow is the non-negotiable foundation of its existence.

Why They Climb Trees Anyway

Despite being burrowers at heart, chipmunks climb trees routinely. They scramble up trunks to harvest seeds, nuts, and berries. They bolt up tree trunks to escape ground-based predators like weasels, foxes, and house cats. And in some species and situations, they even build nests in trees.

Siberian chipmunks, for instance, place nests in both underground burrows and tree hollows. A study of Siberian chipmunks found that tree nests were used as resting or shelter spots, though not for hibernation or giving birth.² That distinction matters: the tree hollow is a daytime crash pad, not a permanent address. For the serious business of surviving winter and raising young, the underground burrow remains essential.

North American species show a similar pattern. Researchers have documented tree nests used by chipmunks, mostly in conifers, including old woodpecker holes. Mothers with young were the primary occupants, typically during the period of weaning and exploration just before the juveniles dispersed on their own.³ Think of it as a temporary family campsite rather than a year-round residence. Once the young are ready to strike out alone, the family abandons the tree nest.

Not All Chipmunks Are Equally Ground-Bound

There are about 25 species of chipmunks, and they span a surprisingly wide range of habitat preferences. Some are quite comfortable in trees, while others barely leave the ground. The classic field research on this comes from the American West, where two chipmunk species, the cliff chipmunk and the Uinta chipmunk, divide up habitat based in part on how arboreal each one is.

The cliff chipmunk is the more aggressive and more terrestrial of the two. It dominates open, rocky areas where trees are far apart. The Uinta chipmunk, on the other hand, is more social and more arboreal. When forest canopy is dense enough that branches interlock overhead, the Uinta chipmunk gains the competitive edge because it can flee through the treetops rather than across open ground.⁴ In sparse forest, the cliff chipmunk chases the Uinta chipmunk away, because without connected canopy, the Uinta chipmunk has to flee on the ground, where it’s at a disadvantage.

This competitive dynamic neatly illustrates the spectrum. Some chipmunk species have evolved to exploit trees heavily as escape routes and foraging platforms, while others are almost entirely ground-bound. Where a given chipmunk falls on that spectrum depends on its species, its competitors, and the density of the forest around it.

Bodies Built for the In-Between

Chipmunks belong to the squirrel family, Sciuridae, which includes everything from fully arboreal tree squirrels to strictly terrestrial prairie dogs. Within this family, chipmunks sit in the middle. Their anatomy reflects that compromise.

One telling feature is hind-foot reversal, the ability to rotate the ankle so the hind feet point backward while descending a tree head-first. Fully arboreal squirrels have pronounced hind-foot reversal; strictly ground-dwelling squirrels have little to none. Chipmunks, classified as semi-arboreal, show intermediate levels of hind-foot reversal, which appears to benefit animals that navigate both on the ground and in the trees.⁵ They can descend a trunk headfirst, but they’re not as fluid at it as a red squirrel or a gray squirrel. Watch a chipmunk come down a tree and you’ll often see it pause, reorient, and descend in short bursts rather than the smooth, continuous glide of a fully arboreal species.

Their tails tell a similar story. Tree squirrels have long, bushy tails that act as counterweights and airbrakes during leaps between branches. Chipmunk tails are much shorter and thinner, useful for balance during a quick climb but not built for acrobatic canopy travel. The oldest known fossil member of the squirrel family looked much like a modern tree squirrel, with long fingers and toes for gripping branches and a long bushy tail for balance. Chipmunks’ ancestors likely traded some of those arboreal features for a body plan better suited to burrowing and ground foraging.

How Weather and Season Shift the Balance

A chipmunk’s daily routine above ground is heavily influenced by temperature and season. During spring and summer, you’ll see chipmunks foraging on the ground, climbing trees, and defending territory for much of the day. But when temperatures climb too high, they retreat underground. Research on the Palmer’s chipmunk, an isolated species in Nevada, found that chipmunks significantly reduced their above-ground activity during the hottest parts of the day, likely retreating to underground burrows where temperatures are cooler and more stable.⁶

This finding has implications for how climate change could reshape chipmunk behavior. If summer temperatures keep rising, chipmunks in already-warm habitats may be forced to spend more time underground and less time foraging, which could limit how much food they gather before winter hibernation. For a species that depends on cached food stores to survive months of dormancy, less foraging time is a real problem. The burrow that protects them from heat in summer is the same burrow that needs to be stocked with food for winter, and those two demands can start to conflict as temperatures rise.

In autumn, chipmunks enter an intense food-hoarding phase, spending nearly all their above-ground time collecting and caching seeds and nuts. This is when you’ll see them making rapid trips between food sources and their burrow entrances, cheek pouches bulging. They cache food both inside the burrow and in shallow ground caches scattered around their territory. Once the food stores are stocked, they retreat underground for hibernation, though “hibernation” in chipmunks is more of a series of deep torpor bouts punctuated by brief waking periods to eat from their larder.

What Chipmunks Do When They Sense a Predator

Predator encounters reveal just how central the ground-level refuge is to a chipmunk’s survival strategy. When an aerial predator like a hawk approaches, the typical response is not to climb higher into a tree. Instead, the chipmunk flees toward a nearby ground-level refuge, usually a burrow entrance, a rock crevice, or the base of a log, while producing a rapid trill call. After a few seconds of hiding, the chipmunk usually pokes back out and begins producing a series of sharp chuck calls while facing the direction of the predator.⁷

The chuck calls are not just alarm signals for other chipmunks. They also serve to tell the predator “I see you,” which can deter a hawk from attempting an attack that depends on surprise. The important behavioral point here is that the chipmunk’s entire escape and alarm system revolves around ground-level refuges. A tree squirrel’s instinct is to spiral up a trunk and hide on the far side; a chipmunk’s instinct is to dive for the nearest hole. Even chipmunks that were up in a tree when the threat appeared will typically descend rapidly and bolt for cover at ground level.

The Ecological Payoff of Living Between Ground and Trees

Chipmunks’ habit of moving between the ground and the canopy makes them surprisingly important players in forest ecology, particularly when it comes to seed dispersal. Chipmunks harvest seeds that fall from trees, carry them away from the parent tree, and bury them in the soil at scattered cache sites. Many of these cached seeds are never retrieved, especially when a chipmunk dies or simply forgets a cache location. Those forgotten seeds can germinate and grow into new trees.

Research on Jeffrey pine found that chipmunks actually provided higher-quality seed dispersal than wind. They quickly collected seeds from the ground, moved them away from the source tree, and buried them in microhabitats where the seeds were more likely to establish as seedlings.⁸ Wind scatters seeds randomly, many of which land on unsuitable surfaces. Chipmunks, by burying seeds at a shallow depth in soil with good conditions, inadvertently act as precision planters.

Chipmunks also disperse something less obvious: fungal spores. They eat truffles and other underground fungi, and the spores pass through their digestive systems intact. A survey in northwestern Ontario found that both eastern chipmunks and red squirrels carried spores from multiple genera of truffle fungi as well as several types of above-ground mushrooms.⁹ Many of these fungi form partnerships with tree roots that help trees absorb water and nutrients from the soil. By spreading fungal spores through their droppings as they move between burrows and foraging sites, chipmunks help maintain the underground fungal networks that forests depend on.

Chipmunks in Backyards and Human-Modified Spaces

If you live in the eastern half of North America and have a yard with some trees and rock features, you’ve probably seen chipmunks exploiting every surface available. They are remarkably adaptable to human-modified environments. Researchers have documented chipmunks frequently using houses, roof drainage systems, stone walls, and debris piles as shelter and foraging habitat.¹⁰ A stone retaining wall or a foundation gap functions much like a natural rock crevice, and chipmunks readily dig burrows under patios, walkways, and garden sheds.

This is where the “do they live in trees or on the ground” question gets practical for homeowners. A chipmunk that’s climbing the oak tree in your yard is foraging. A chipmunk that’s disappearing under your front steps is living there. The burrow is the problem spot when chipmunks cause structural concerns, since extensive tunneling under pavement or foundations can undermine them over time. The tree climbing is essentially harmless from a property standpoint, though chipmunks can raid bird feeders with impressive determination.

The preference for sloped terrain and log-rich microhabitats documented in wild populations translates directly to residential settings.¹ Yards with retaining walls, railroad-tie borders, stacked firewood, or rock gardens are especially attractive. If you’re trying to discourage chipmunks from burrowing near a structure, removing ground-level cover and debris within a few feet of the foundation is more effective than trying to keep them out of trees, because the trees are not where they’re setting up permanent residence.

Why Chipmunks Chose the Ground When Squirrels Chose the Trees

People often wonder why chipmunks ended up as burrowers when their close relatives, the tree squirrels, committed fully to life in the canopy. The squirrel family’s oldest known fossil, dating to roughly 36 million years ago, resembled a modern tree squirrel, with long gripping digits and a bushy tail for aerial balance. At some point, the lineage that became chipmunks moved toward a more terrestrial lifestyle, trading canopy agility for burrowing capability.

Underground burrows offer advantages that tree nests cannot match. They provide thermal insulation in winter, protection from aerial predators, and secure food storage. A larder hoard buried in a sealed underground chamber is far safer from competitors than a stash wedged into a tree fork. For a small animal facing months of cold weather and a landscape full of hawks, owls, and weasels, a well-constructed burrow is arguably the best real estate available.

But chipmunks never abandoned trees entirely, and that flexibility may be part of their success. They can exploit food resources high in the canopy, use trees as temporary escape routes, and nest in tree cavities when conditions favor it. They occupy an ecological niche that neither a strictly arboreal species nor a strictly fossorial one could fill. In a sense, the answer to whether chipmunks live in trees or on the ground is that they’ve carved out a living by refusing to fully commit to either.