Hibernators Week: Chipmunks Six Ways (Tamias spp.)

In one sense, I got lazy with this drawing, doing it in sharpie on top of my pencil with no shading, no blending, no colored pencil, and it’s on my tracing paper sketch instead of a nice crisp sheet of vellum. No furry details, no crazy colors. But if you knew how long I researched it and how many times I tried to draw it the normal way, you would know it wasn’t lazy at all. So here are six species of chipmunks from the Tamias genus. Clockwise from the top right: T. obscurus, T. quadrimaculatus, T. speciosus, T. senex, T. amoenus, and T. alpinus. All six species live in California.

Six more rodents! Check ’em off if you’re scoring at home!