The Abert’s squirrel is Arizona’s tassel-eared pine squirrel, recorded across the state’s ponderosa country. Open occurrence databases hold 2,286 Arizona records for it, most of them iNaturalist photos (1,887 in all), concentrated in the high pine forests of the Colorado Plateau and the taller Sky Island peaks.
Bound to the ponderosa pine
This squirrel lives almost entirely inside one forest type. It feeds on ponderosa seeds and cones, strips the sugary inner bark from young twigs, and digs out the pine’s root fungi, so its range tracks the tree with unusual fidelity. That is why Coconino County leads by a wide margin, taking in the ponderosa belt around Flagstaff, the San Francisco Peaks, and the Mogollon Rim, while the Santa Catalinas above Tucson form a southern outpost in Pima County. Where the pine gives way to desert below or spruce and fir above, the squirrel drops out.
Active in every season
Abert’s squirrel does not hibernate, so its sightings spread fairly evenly across all twelve months rather than collapsing to a summer window. Look for a large gray squirrel with a rusty wash down the back, a pale belly, and the long dark ear tufts that grow most prominent through the colder half of the year and give the animal its name.
Status in Arizona
The Abert’s squirrel is native to Arizona and secure here, ranked S5 by NatureServe. It is one of the easier small mammals to find in the state, since a day in almost any mature ponderosa stand stands a good chance of turning one up.
Full species profile
