A couple of photos (see below) and a YouTube video of a very rare melanistic Eastern Chipmunk.
 
This morning I was out with fellow pbaser Hank Vander Velde and friends hoping to photograph a very rare black chipmunk that has been seen several times this summer at one of our local nature areas. Fellow pbaser Catherine Gardner found this black chipmunk in early July and I saw it for the first time in late July. I was unsuccessful in my attempt to photograph this black chipmunk when I first saw it in late July and vowed to return but never did. Seeing Hank's photos from yesterday encouraged me to head back and try again.
 
When I arrived I was discouraged to hear that the black chipmunk had only been seen once during the past hour and a half and only briefly. I had nothing else to do today, so I joined the waiters and intended to wait all day if necessary. So we waited, quietly, too quietly I thought. My backyard chipmunks come running when they hear the door opening and I wondered if the chipmunks here, being used to having nuts and seeds handed to them from plastic bags, would respond if they heard someone walking around and crinkling a plastic bag. Well, that worked! When I crinkled my feed bag the sound encouraged the black chipmunk out of the bushes. I then put a pile of seed on the ground and that was that. The black chipmunk came out to stuff his cheeks with peanuts and sunflower seeds and returned again and again for the next hour and a half.
 
Here in this part of Canada black Eastern Gray Squirrels are very common and even outnumber the gray variety. But south of the St Lawrence River black Eastern Gray Squirrels are unheard of. When my family from New York and places further south come here for a visit they always comment on how they have never seen a black squirrel except around here. In the case of the Eastern Chipmunk, however, black individuals are very rare anywhere. This may be the only black chipmunk I will ever encounter. But they do occur. Coincidentally, on the my way home I met an older man in the woods who mentioned that there was a black chipmunk living on Bate Island some time ago.