The eastern gray squirrel is the second most recorded mammal in Michigan’s atlas, with 5,577 records spread across 86 counties. The densest reporting follows the hardwood country of the southern Lower Peninsula, Oakland, Ingham, Wayne, and Macomb counties, but the map runs to Marquette and Houghton in the Upper Peninsula, near the northern edge of the species’ range.
A squirrel married to mast
Gray squirrels live where oaks, hickories, and beech produce a heavy nut crop, and Michigan’s southern hardwoods, campus groves, and older neighborhoods supply exactly that. Records at the University of Michigan Biological Station, Hartwick Pines State Park, and Saugatuck Dunes State Park show the squirrel holding on wherever mature trees stand, from big timber to lakeshore woods. In northern Michigan the all-black color morph, a dark form of this same species, turns up often enough to draw comment.
The autumn cache
September brings a second crest in the record, and it tracks the squirrel’s busiest season. A gray squirrel scatter-hoards, burying acorns and hickory nuts one at a time across its home range and recovering many of them later by smell, behavior that keeps it outdoors and visible long after other animals have turned quiet.
Status in Michigan
NatureServe ranks the eastern gray squirrel S5, Secure, in Michigan, and the species is native throughout the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
