Western grey squirrel
It buries more acorns than it digs up again, which is one of the ways an oak woodland plants itself.
In brief
Sciurus griseus, Sciuridae, order Rodentia.
- Resident
- Native to the Pacific slope
- Eats acorns, pine seed and fungi
Where it lives
Washington to Baja California, in oak and conifer woodland. It is a native, and unlike the eastern grey it has been losing ground rather than taking it.
When you see it
Recorded here on September 13, 2025.
What it eats
Acorns above all, plus pine seed, and underground fungi that it digs for and then spreads in its droppings.
Here
Photographed on the trail camera. The forgotten caches are the point: an oak cannot walk, and a squirrel that buries a few hundred acorns and loses track of some of them is how the woodland moves uphill.
By Yggdrasil Springs
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