The fox squirrel puts up 1103 records in Arkansas, well over half of them from Sebastian County, with smaller pockets in Pulaski, Washington, and White counties. It is the state’s big squirrel, noticeably heavier and longer-tailed than the gray, and it prefers a roomier kind of woods.
A squirrel of open timber
Where gray squirrels belong to dense, closed forest, fox squirrels favor scattered oaks and hickories, parkland, forest edges, and wide-spaced bottomland hardwoods, places where they can forage on the ground and travel tree to tree without a continuous canopy. Records at Lake Dardanelle State Park, Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park, and Lake Chicot State Park fit that open character, as do the edges of Ozark National Forest and the big woods along the Buffalo National River.
Twice a year the ground gets busy
Reports climb from March through May and again in October, matching the squirrel’s own calendar: spring litters and summer feeding on mulberries, buds, and insects, then a fall rush to cut and bury hickory nuts, pecans, and acorns. July and August go quiet in the heat, when the squirrels loaf in the shade and feed early and late.
Status in Arkansas
NatureServe ranks the fox squirrel S5, Secure, and the species is native to Arkansas. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state.
