The fox squirrel tops Indiana’s mammal atlas with 4,097 records, a fitting lead for the largest tree squirrel in North America. Its map is a map of open hardwood country, from the restored prairie margins at Kankakee Sands to Mounds State Park, Fort Benjamin Harrison State Park, and Pokagon State Park, with Marion County’s parks and tree-lined neighborhoods alone contributing more than 1,200 records.
A squirrel of open woods and fencerows
Where the gray squirrel belongs to closed forest, the fox squirrel favors parklike ground, scattered mature oaks and hickories with open understory where it can forage on the ground and travel fencerows from tree to tree. That taste suits Indiana’s farm country and town parks far better than deep woods, and no tree squirrel in the state spends more time on the ground, caching nuts in the soil a few at a time.
Spring and fall pulses
Records crest twice, in April and again in September. Spring brings the year’s first young out of the nest while bare branches still leave foragers exposed, and the September crest comes as hickory nuts and acorns drop and the squirrels spend their days cutting, carrying, and burying the crop.
Status in Indiana
NatureServe ranks the fox squirrel S5, Secure, in Indiana, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
