Eastern Gray Squirrel

HABITAT REQUIREMENTS & FEEDING HABITS
Both gray and fox squirrels are associated with wooded habitats. Although they are often found together in the same area (sympatric), there are some differences in their preferred habitats.

In rural Georgia, gray squirrels are most numerous in mature upland and bottomland hardwood forests. These forested areas usually contain a diversity of oaks and hickories (hardwoods). Though mostly associated with hardwood forests, gray squirrels can also be found in mixed pine/hardwood forests, especially where availability of pure hardwoods stands is lacking. In developed areas gray squirrels can be found in parks and neighborhoods. Gray squirrel densities can be quite high in urban and suburban areas.

Fox squirrels in Georgia tend to be most closely associated with mature pine and mixed pine/hardwood habitats. Extensive mature Piedmont and Coastal Plain pine stands with open understories and herbaceous ground cover seem to be especially dominated by fox squirrels with little or no occurrence of gray squirrels.

Oak acorns and hickory nuts provide the most nutritious food for gray squirrels, and they will also eat the flowers of these trees in the spring. Gray squirrels eat a variety of other foods including buds and flowers of other trees, dogwood fruit, mulberries, blackgum fruit, grasses and various forbs.

Fox squirrels will eat many of the same foods as gray squirrels, including acorns and nuts of those oaks and hickories often found scattered in upland pine habitats. Pine seeds are a major fox squirrel food item and they will consume various other foods such as buds and fruits of other trees and fungi. A small portion of both gray and fox squirrel diets is comprised of animal matter such as insects and other arthropods and small vertebrates.