📍 Sandy Hook Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) This juvenile, likely from a spring litter, is out foraging on its own in midsummer — tawny coat not yet turned fully red. Red foxes are year-round residents of Sandy Hook and common throughout the Gateway National Recreation Area. Modeled range · iNaturalist · CC BY 4.0 Wikipedia | iNaturalist | Range map
📍 San Mateo Eastern Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger) North America’s largest tree squirrel, it spends more time foraging on the ground than most tree squirrels and scatter-hoards nuts across dozens of small caches to get through winter. Melanistic individuals are usually rare, but in parts of San Mateo they are so common that an all-black coat is practically the local norm rather than the exception. Modeled range · iNaturalist · CC BY 4.0 Wikipedia | iNaturalist | Range map
📍 San Mateo Eastern Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger) The all-black coat comes from a recessive melanistic variant that switches off the usual rusty-orange pigment, leaving individuals uniformly dark from nose to tail. Fox squirrels are not native to California — they spread across the Bay Area after introductions in the early 20th century and now outnumber the native Western Gray Squirrel across much of San Mateo’s parks and neighborhoods. Modeled range · iNaturalist · CC BY 4.0 Wikipedia | iNaturalist | Range map