Illinois’s 3,624 fox squirrel records sketch a state of big trees and open ground. DuPage, Cook, McLean, and Coles counties lead the record, and named clusters gather in parklike woods such as Robert Allerton Park, Weldon Springs State Park, and the grounds of Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site.
The squirrel of open woods
The fox squirrel is the largest tree squirrel in North America, and it favors a different setting than its gray cousin: scattered mature trees with room between them, forest edges, and parkland where it can forage on the ground for hickory nuts, acorns, and corn from nearby fields. It spends more of its time on the ground than the gray squirrel and crosses open country more readily, which suits it well to Illinois’s patchwork of timber, farmland, and town.
Restless through every season
Reports arrive in all twelve months and crest in March and April, when squirrels are mating and working over the last of the winter’s buried nuts. Like other tree squirrels it does not hibernate, sheltering in a leaf nest or tree cavity through the worst cold and emerging to dig up its scattered caches whenever the weather softens.
Status in Illinois
NatureServe ranks the fox squirrel S5, Secure, in Illinois, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
