The eastern gray squirrel is a Pennsylvania native through and through, and with 13,712 records it is one of the two most-recorded mammals in the state. Bucks, Philadelphia, and Montgomery counties lead the count, but any township with mature oaks or hickories holds them, from Valley Forge National Historical Park to the old neighborhoods of Allegheny County.
Built around the mast crop
A gray squirrel’s year turns on acorns, hickory nuts, and beechnuts. It scatter-hoards them by the hundreds, burying each nut separately and relocating many later by smell and memory, and the forgotten fraction plants the next generation of forest. Pennsylvania’s records surge in September and October, the heart of caching season, when squirrels work the ground under fruiting trees in plain sight.
Out in every month
Gray squirrels do not hibernate. They hole up in tree cavities and leaf nests called dreys through the coldest weather, but they venture out in every month to raid their own caches, and January counts in the hundreds show it. Black-coated squirrels, a dark color morph of the same species, turn up regularly in Pennsylvania as well, especially in the northern tier.
Status in Pennsylvania
NatureServe ranks the eastern gray squirrel S5, Secure, in Pennsylvania. The species is native to the state, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
