More than 23,000 records make the eastern gray squirrel the most reported mammal in North Carolina’s atlas, with observations in all but one of the state’s hundred counties. It is as much at home in city parks like Blue Jay Point and William B. Umstead State Park as in the hardwood coves of Pisgah and Nantahala national forests and Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Made for the hardwood canopy
Gray squirrels are built for life in mature deciduous forest. They feed heavily on acorns and hickory nuts, burying thousands of single nuts each fall and finding many of them again by smell months later, a habit that plants a share of the next generation of oaks. Where the canopy breaks, they shift readily to pine seeds, buds, fruit, and fungi, which helps explain their success from the Blue Ridge to the coastal woods around Nags Head Woods.
Two busy seasons, one quiet one
Reports peak twice, in March and April and again from September through November, with a clear midsummer lull. The spring high matches renewed activity and breeding, the autumn high matches the mast-harvest push, and the summer dip reflects a season when squirrels feed up in the treetops and rest through the heat.
Status in North Carolina
NatureServe ranks the eastern gray squirrel S5, Secure, in North Carolina. Fittingly for a species whose scientific name means “of Carolina,” it is native throughout the state and has been North Carolina’s official state mammal since 1969.
Full species profile
