Quote from Essup: There aren't any greys around here, but go 30 miles East and there's reds, greys and the melanistic phase of the greys. (black)
Does anyone have white ones? Two towns I am familiar with brag that they are the "home of the white squirrel". Olney Illinois and Marrionville MO. I've also seen them in Flora Illinois, up the road from Olney.
Those towns are the only ones I have heard talk about their white squirrels(albino grays). I have seen a couple white squirrels here in the east, but just that a couple. There are areas with some black squirrels(mellanistic grays), mostly in New England but scattered elsewhere.
We have a federally endangered subspecies of the fox squirrel called the Delmarva fox squirrel. It lives on the Delmarva peninsula around the Chesapeake Bay. It's about the same size as the western fox squirrels but is a solid steel gray. Down where my in-laws live in NC, they have the southern subspecies of fox squirrel. They come in 3 color phases. The most common, a gray color phase with a "black mask", an all black phase with usually a white nose and ears and the least common color phase, less than 5% is the brown color phase which is brownish orange with a black mask and white edging. However, there is a lot of variation among those phases.
I've killed a lot of the western fox squirrels in PA as they have spread from the Midwest into the east. I've seen the Delmarva fox squirrel while sika deer hunting, but don't wanna go shooting an endangered species. I am hoping to do some hunting around my in-laws for the fox squirrels there. Trying to get all the different color phases and species mounted over the years. They make interesting wall art, even if my wife disagrees.
