Least chipmunks are only locally common in Washington. I have found them in areas where the soil was firmly packed and sagebrush the dominant vegetation. All were far from water. Two miles west of Vantage, Kittitas County, several were found near an old sheep corral, where one took shelter in a pile of boards. In my experience, least chipmunks are wary and difficult to collect. Many times as I crept silently through the sagebrush chipmunk after chipmunk scampered with tail aloft into a hole at the base of same sage bush, each far out of gunshot, voicing alarmed chirps. The extreme caution of least chipmunks, as compared with other species, is doubtless a necessary adaptation to living in an exposed situation. The open sagebrush desert is a favored hunting place of hawks and eagles; also coyotes, wildcats, and badgers sometimes abound there. All these probably find the least chipmunk a suitable food item and only the most cautious chipmunk survives to reproduce. The least chipmunk has been timed at a speed of 10 miles per hour (Cottam and Williams, 1943: 262). The food of the least chipmunk in eastern Washington is almost entirely seeds of the annuals that flourish briefly in the spring. Insects probably are eaten and one specimen had the remains of two scorpions in its stomach. =Tamias minimus scrutator= (Hall and Hatfield) _Eutamias minimus pictus_ Howell, N. Amer. Fauna, 52:39, November 30, 1929. _Eutamias minimus scrutator_ Hall and Hatfield, Univ. California Publ. Zoöl., 40:321, February 12, 1934. _Tamias minimus scrutator_ Ellerman, Fam. and Genera of Living Rodents, British Mus. Nat. Hist., p. 432, June 8, 1940. [Illustration: FIG. 80. Distribution of the least chipmunk in Washington. A. _Tamias minimus scrutator._ B. _Tamias minimus grisescens._] _Type._--Obtained near Blanco Mountain, 10500 ft. elevation, Mono County, California, by J. Grinnell on July 28, 1917; type in Museum of Vertebrate Zoölogy. _Racial characters._--Buffy color; wide dark stripes and narrow pale stripes. _Measurements._--A male and a female from Sunnyside, Yakima County, measure respectively; total length 186, 186; length of tail 81, 82; hind foot 31, 31; ear 9, 10. _Distribution._--The sagebrush areas west of the Columbia River. Present in scattered and widely separated areas, ranging, according to Howell (1929: 41), north to Ellensburg and south to Wiley City. This species is a member of the Great Basin Fauna that entered the state from Oregon. The population in Washington is now isolated north and west of the Columbia River but seems not to differ from least chipmunks from Oregon and Nevada. =Tamias minimus grisescens= (Howell) _Eutamias minimus grisescens_ Howell, Jour. Mamm., 6:52, February 9, 1925.