Eastern gray squirrels are Florida’s single most-recorded mammal, with nearly 38,000 sightings spanning Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal hammocks, Paynes Prairie’s oak edges, and the pine-oak woods of Myakka River State Park and Ocala National Forest. That spread crosses the peninsula’s coast, inland prairie, and forest alike, a sign of how little this squirrel depends on any one habitat type.
Records carry two peaks, a spring rise in April and a much sharper one in October, more than double any other month. The fall surge likely tracks acorn and hickory nut caching season, when squirrels are constantly on the move burying food ahead of winter, while the spring bump lines up with the tail end of breeding activity. NatureServe hasn’t assigned Florida a numeric rank for the species (SNR, unranked), despite it being the state’s best-documented mammal by record count.
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