The fox squirrel is the most recorded squirrel in Iowa, 1,483 records across 82 counties, and its map differs from the gray squirrel’s in a telling way. Polk, Story, Linn, and Black Hawk counties lead, and reporting stays strong straight through the open farm country of central and western Iowa where its grayer cousin thins out.
Built for open woods and farm groves
Where the gray squirrel wants unbroken canopy, the fox squirrel prefers its timber in pieces: scattered oaks along streams, farmstead groves, shelterbelts, town parks, and riverside bottoms with room to travel on the ground between trees. It is the largest tree squirrel in North America and the more terrestrial of Iowa’s two squirrels, covering ground with a bounding gait and foraging in the open as readily as in the branches. Walnut Woods State Park, Lake Ahquabi State Park, and Lake Manawa State Park all hold the open oak and walnut habitat it favors, and corn from nearby fields rounds out a menu built on hickory nuts, walnuts, and acorns.
On the ground in autumn
Reports run strong in April and May, then crest again in September and October when the nut harvest pulls squirrels down out of the trees. Like its relatives it does not hibernate; it winters in leaf nests or tree cavities and lives off buried caches, digging them up through snow from memory and smell. Iowa’s bare winter ground makes that work visible, and a fox squirrel low in a hedgerow or crossing a stubble field is a familiar cold-season sight in much of the state.
Status in Iowa
NatureServe ranks the fox squirrel S5, Secure, in Iowa, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
