Michigan’s open databases hold 425 records of the southern flying squirrel, and the densest cluster sits around Ottawa National Forest in the western Upper Peninsula. That’s a documentation pattern, not a headcount. This is a nocturnal glider that spends its life above the ground and rarely crosses paths with a person in daylight.
Two different woods, one gliding animal
Ottawa National Forest’s mixed hardwood-conifer stands sit near the northern edge of this squirrel’s range, where sugar maple, yellow birch, and hemlock still give it enough closed canopy to glide from tree to tree. Farther south, records around Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge and Waterloo State Recreation Area come from a different Michigan altogether: glacial farmland dotted with oak-hickory woodlots and beech-maple stands. A flying squirrel can still get by there as long as the trees along a woodlot’s edge stay close enough for it to launch and land without touching ground.
Gliding at night, then piling into a shared den
This squirrel doesn’t fly so much as fall in a controlled glide, stretching a loose flap of furred skin between wrist and ankle to steer between trunks. It feeds mostly after dark on nuts, seeds, fungi, and the occasional bird egg or insect, and it caches food ahead of winter instead of sleeping through it. Once the cold sets in, several flying squirrels often crowd into the same old woodpecker hole or leaf nest to share body heat, a habit that sets it apart from Michigan’s day-active tree squirrels.
Status in Michigan
NatureServe ranks the southern flying squirrel S5, secure, and it’s native to Michigan. Records here run year-round with no strong seasonal swing, which fits an animal that stays active through winter instead of denning it out.
