Alabama’s fox squirrel record, 445 occurrences across 50 counties, tilts toward the coastal plain, with Baldwin County leading and clusters reaching inland through Montgomery and Bullock and north to Jackson County.
A squirrel of open pine woods
The fox squirrel is North America’s largest tree squirrel, and it is built for a different forest than the gray squirrel. It favors open, park-like stands where mature trees stand well apart, above all the longleaf pine woods of the coastal plain, and it does much of its foraging on the ground between them, taking pine seeds, acorns, and fungi. That habitat shows in the record: Dauphin Island and Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge anchor the coastal end, while Wehle Nature Preserve and Conecuh National Forest hold records in the wiregrass and longleaf country farther inland.
A low, steady calendar
Counts rise gently from March through May and never fall away entirely. Fox squirrels stay active all year, and their habit of traveling and feeding on open ground makes them easier to watch than gray squirrels once found, a big, unhurried animal moving across the pine straw in plain view.
Status in Alabama
NatureServe ranks the fox squirrel S3, Vulnerable, in Alabama even though the species holds a G5, Secure, rank rangewide. It is native to the state, and its standing here is bound to the open longleaf landscape that has itself shrunk across the Southeast. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous.
