Delaware’s 25 records of the southern flying squirrel cluster in the wooded Piedmont corner around Wilmington, the same stretch of hardwood forest that holds most of the state’s other tree squirrel records. Because this squirrel is nocturnal and glides rather than climbs in the open, most of what reaches these databases comes from nest checks, trail cameras, and the rare homeowner who finds one in an attic, not from a chance daytime sighting.
Mature Piedmont hardwood, not Coastal Plain farmland
A flying squirrel needs a connected canopy to glide between trees and old cavities, often abandoned woodpecker holes, to nest in. Delaware’s Piedmont, the hilly, wooded corner north of Wilmington along the Brandywine and White Clay Creek, still holds enough mature oak and hickory forest to supply both. The flatter, more heavily farmed Coastal Plain that covers most of the state offers far less of that continuous, cavity-rich canopy, which likely explains why the records concentrate so far north.
A cold-weather squirrel to Delaware’s record-keepers
Reports here run through the year with no single strong peak, but the two heaviest months, October and December, land right as the weather turns. Southern flying squirrels often den together through cold weather, several animals sharing one tree cavity for warmth, and that habit makes them more likely to turn up in a nest check, a bird box, or even an attic just as the state’s records show an uptick.
Status in Delaware
The southern flying squirrel is native to Delaware and holds a NatureServe rank of S5, Secure, the system’s highest security tier. It isn’t listed as nonindigenous by USGS NAS, and its light record count reflects a genuinely nocturnal, gliding animal that’s simply hard to catch in the act, not a species in decline.
