Central Park · October 2018
Three Thousand Squirrels
Over two weeks in the fall of 2018, hundreds of volunteers walked every path in Central Park to count every squirrel they could find. They tallied 3,023 sightings — and noted, for each one, what it was doing, what it looked like, and how it reacted to the people watching it.
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Every sighting
Each dot is one squirrel. Volunteers swept the park hectare by hectare, mostly at dawn and again at dusk — when squirrels are most active and easiest to spot.
3,023 sightings recorded across 14 days.
Two shifts a day
Counts ran in two shifts: AM just after sunrise, and PM in the late afternoon. Watch the dots breathe between the two — squirrels showed up in different places at different times of day.
Mostly grey, sometimes not
Nearly every squirrel here is an eastern grey, but a few aren't. Roughly 13% are cinnamon and about 4% are black — color variants of the same species. The dark ones tend to cluster in the park's wooded north end.
The park speaks
Squirrels make three vocal calls. A kuk is a sharp warning bark, often aimed at a hawk overhead. A quaa is a longer, downward call — a sustained alarm. A moan signals a more distant threat. Each pulse here marks a sighting where a volunteer heard one.
Friend, foe, or furniture
For every sighting, volunteers noted how the squirrel reacted to them. Some approached. Most were indifferent. Others ran. The bold ones cluster near the south end and the Mall — exactly where the tourists are.