With 1,816 records, the eastern gray squirrel is among the most thoroughly recorded mammals in New Hampshire’s atlas. Reports come from all ten counties but pile up in the hardwood country of the south, with Hillsborough, Rockingham, and Merrimack counties alone accounting for well over half.
A squirrel that runs on acorns
Gray squirrels are animals of mature hardwood forest, living on acorns, beechnuts, hickory nuts, and maple seed. Each fall a squirrel buries thousands of nuts one at a time across the forest floor, recovering many by memory and smell through winter and planting the ones it forgets. New Hampshire’s counts crest from April through June and spike again in September, when the mast drop puts squirrels on the ground in plain sight; the heaviest named counts come from the University of New Hampshire’s College Woods and Horticulture Farm, classic oak-and-edge country.
Where the gray gives way to the red
The map thins sharply in Coos County and the high White Mountains, where conifers replace oak and the smaller red squirrel takes over. White Mountain National Forest and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail hold scattered records, mostly from valley bottoms and hardwood benches at lower elevation.
Status in New Hampshire
NatureServe ranks the eastern gray squirrel S5, Secure, in New Hampshire, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
