The American red squirrel is the second most frequently recorded mammal in Maine’s atlas, with 3,269 mapped sightings, trailing only the eastern chipmunk. Loud, active during the day, and quick to scold anything that gets near its territory, it’s one of the easiest mammals in the state to notice, and that shows up directly in how often it gets reported.
A midden is a lifetime investment
Maine’s spruce-fir forest, the kind that covers much of Acadia National Park and climbs Katahdin’s lower slopes, produces exactly the cone crop a red squirrel needs. Each squirrel defends a central cache, a midden, where it piles up cone scales year after year while storing whole cones underneath for winter. A good midden site can outlast the squirrel that built it, passed down to whichever animal claims the territory next. That single-minded defense of one patch of forest is also why red squirrels are so easy to hear coming: an intruder anywhere near the midden gets a rapid, chattering alarm call before it gets much closer.
Quieter in the cold months
Records drop off through the fall and stay lower all winter, even though red squirrels don’t hibernate and remain active through the cold. Less time spent chattering at the surface and more time moving through tunnels packed into the snow around the midden means fewer chances for anyone to notice one, not fewer squirrels on the ground.
Status in Maine
NatureServe ranks the American red squirrel S5, secure, and it’s native to Maine. Its fortunes track the health of the state’s spruce-fir forest, the same conifer stands that supply its winter cone stores.
Full species profile
