With 3,287 records, the eastern gray squirrel is one of the most-recorded mammals in Vermont’s atlas, and the map is a hardwood map. Chittenden, Addison, and Orange counties lead, the lake-plain towns and the rolling hardwood country along the Connecticut River side of the state.
Built for the mast crop
Gray squirrels live on tree seeds: acorns, beechnuts, maple keys, and hickory nuts. They get through winter on nuts buried one at a time across the forest floor and found again months later by memory and smell. That ties the species to Vermont’s deciduous lowlands rather than the high spruce-fir, and the records agree, with village shade trees, Champlain Valley parks, and the hardwood stands of Green Mountain National Forest and Mt. Philo and Niquette Bay state parks accounting for much of the record.
Busy in every month
Unlike the groundhog, a gray squirrel never hibernates. It sleeps through the worst cold in a leaf nest or tree cavity and forages on every mild day. Reports hold strong right through winter, spike hard in April, when the canopy is still bare and squirrels are easy to spot working the leaf litter, and rise again in autumn during the caching rush.
Status in Vermont
NatureServe ranks the eastern gray squirrel S5, Secure, in Vermont, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
