Connecticut’s atlas holds 3590 records of the eastern gray squirrel, more than for almost any other mammal in the state. Fairfield, Hartford, and New Haven counties carry the heaviest totals, but in a state this wooded the gray squirrel is effectively everywhere there are oaks, hickories, and people.
Made for Connecticut’s hardwoods
Gray squirrels run on tree mast, acorns, hickory nuts, and beechnuts that they bury by the thousands each fall and recover months later by smell and memory. That ties them to mature deciduous forest, but Connecticut’s version of that forest includes town greens, cemeteries, campuses, and shaded backyards, all of which hold squirrels. Records from Beardsley Park, Sessions Woods Wildlife Area, and Mansfield Hollow Wildlife Management Area fit the pattern: anywhere with nut-bearing canopy overhead.
A December crest in leafless woods
Unlike the groundhogs and chipmunks it shares the state with, the gray squirrel stays active all winter, and Connecticut’s record reflects it. Counts stay high straight through the cold months and crest in December, when leafless trees make a foraging squirrel easy to follow and the first of the year’s two breeding seasons sends chases through the bare branches.
Status in Connecticut
NatureServe ranks the eastern gray squirrel S5, Secure, and it is a native Connecticut species. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
Full species profile
