Identification
This squirrel is gray with a few reddish tones and silvery-tipped hair especially on hips, feet, and head. Occasionally they are black or albino, and their tail and stomach is white to pale gray. This squirrel has two coats: one for winter and another for summer and they molt twice a year. The eastern gray squirrel also has whiskers called vibrissae that are touch receptors, provide the animal with information about its immediate surroundings. They are about 40-50 cm long with tails 21-24 cm long and usually live about 7-8 years.
Behavior
The eastern gray is a scatter-hoarder, it hoards food in numerous small caches for recovery later. Some of these caches (especially those made near the site of a sudden abundance of food) are retrieved within hours or days for re-burial in a more secure site. Others are not retrieved until months later. It has been estimated that each squirrel makes several thousand caches each season. The squirrels have very accurate spatial memory for the locations of these caches and use landmarks to retrieve them. Olfaction (smell) is used only once the squirrel is within close range of the cache site.
These squirrels are also known for making a variety of noises, including a loud screeching "buck buck buck" sound and a chattering, often followed by "kyukyukyuuuu." They make these noises to communicate with other gray squirrels, and sometimes they make noises during mating.
Habitat
They are mostly found in parks or other areas of mature woodlands where the trees provide storage sites, especially oak, hickory, and walnut trees. They have also been introduced to many human-altered areas and have learned tolerate humans, picking up discarded food or even accepting food from picnickers.
The eastern gray makes three different types of nests: winter dreys, summer dreys, and dens. They drey is made in the forks of trees and consist of dry leaves and twigs. Sometimes they will also attempt to build a nest in the attic or exterior walls of houses. They also invade bird feeders for millet and sunflower seeds (many homeowners use safflower because they seem to have no taste for it or seed with a hot pepper coating that birds cannot taste).
Diet
These squirrels are generalist feeders and eighteen plant species account for 87% of diet. Also included in their diet are nuts, flowers, buds, roots, seeds, or flowers of maples, mulberry, hackberry, elms, buckeyes, horse chestnuts, wild cherries, dogwoods, hawthorne, hazelnut and ginkgo.
Reproduction
There are two breeding seasons every year - December to February and May to June during which females have a litter. Females can have two litters a year with 2 or 3 offspring in each litter. When the female offspring are 5 1/2 months they can reproduce whereas the males sexually mature at 10-11 months.
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