Southern flying squirrels are Alabama’s most frequently recorded gliding mammal, with 186 records logged across the state by iNaturalist and GBIF. Most of those sightings only happen because someone shines a light into the dark after dusk, since this squirrel is nocturnal and easy to miss no matter how often it’s actually out there.
A glider that needs old trees, not open range
This species depends on mature hardwood forest with enough old woodpecker holes and natural cavities to den in, and Alabama has that habitat in three very different settings: the oak-hickory ridges of the Cumberland Plateau around Bankhead National Forest in the north, the Piedmont hill forests of Talladega National Forest in the state’s midsection, and the hardwood creek bottoms threading through the longleaf pine flatwoods of Conecuh National Forest on the Gulf Coastal Plain in the south. Even the maritime forest patches behind the dunes at Gulf State Park hold enough oak cover to support them.
Recorded steadily, not seasonally
Records come in at a similar rate through every month of the year, with no sharp seasonal swing, which fits a resident species that doesn’t migrate and stays active through Alabama’s mild winters. The flat pattern says more about the squirrel’s nocturnal habits than about anything else: it keeps turning up across hardwood forest statewide, just at hours when almost nobody’s looking.
Status in Alabama
NatureServe ranks the southern flying squirrel S5, secure, in Alabama, and USGS NAS doesn’t list it as nonindigenous, so it’s native throughout its mapped Alabama range. It remains one of the state’s most reliably documented small mammals wherever mature hardwood forest still stands.
