Tennessee’s occurrence record for the southern flying squirrel runs to 106 entries, and records climb sharply in February and March, an unusual pattern for an animal that’s just as active in July as in January.
The lowland counterpart to a mountain specialist
This is the default, widespread flying squirrel across the state, holding hardwood forest from the sandstone country around Pickett State Park and Pogue Creek Canyon on the Cumberland Plateau, through Cherokee National Forest, and up into Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It only shares ground with the much rarer northern flying squirrel at the very highest, coolest elevations of the Smokies; everywhere else in Tennessee, from river-bottom hardwoods to ridge oak forest, this is the flying squirrel doing the gliding.
Why winter records spike
In cold weather, southern flying squirrels often den together, packing several animals into a single tree cavity to share body heat overnight. That habit makes a winter nest-box check or den inspection far more likely to turn up multiple squirrels at once than a summer survey would, which is a plausible reason Tennessee’s records climb in February and March rather than tracking any real seasonal shift in how many squirrels are out there.
Status in Tennessee
NatureServe ranks the southern flying squirrel S5, secure, in Tennessee, and it’s native to the state. It remains the state’s default flying squirrel almost everywhere hardwood forest grows, ceding ground only at the cool mountaintop margins where its northern relative takes over.
