We do have a variety of squirrels, and in the interest of calling them by the correct names, I wikied them.
The first photo is a fox squirrel. The next two are gray squirrel. You can clearly see the gray coat. The next is a red squirrel in the bird feeder. It is the only one small enough to fit inside!
The last photo is a Eurasian red squirrel. This is a photo from wikipedia.
This website gives great descriptions of the squirrels we have in Michigan.
Eastern gray squirrel - "occupies most of eastern North America within mature mixed hardwood and conifer forests and was abundant in Michigan when the first settlers arrived.
. . . overall silvery gray body, generally white belly, and tail hairs that are white-tipped.
. . . Black squirrels are simply melanistic phases of the gray squirrels.
. . . The gray squirrel lives most of its life in and around a single nest tree moving no more than 300 yards in a season and is the least social of all tree squirrels.
Fox squirrel - "heavier than the gray and is also longer." . . . The fox has a buff to orange-colored belly, a back of tawny brown, and a long plumed tail of black brown with rust-tipped guard hairs. Fox squirrels prefer small woodlots of mature trees throughout the Lower Peninsula. " *
Red squirrel - "lives throughout the state. This small species prefers a forest of conifers or conifers mixed with hardwoods, where it can find both hardwood mast (nuts) and pine seeds."
Flying squirrel - I don't think I've ever seen one in the wild, but I do remember a few years ago when I was in elementary school and Mother took me to visit Mrs. Drew, my first and second grade teacher. She raised flying squirrels, and had them in a very large cage - as I recall, it took up most of an attached room.
*"Before 1850, the fox squirrel was concentrated around grassland openings in oak forests of southwest Lower Michigan. As the forests were cleared for agriculture and timber, fox squirrels used fence rows as travel routes to expand their range. By 1925 the species was found throughout the Lower Peninsula.
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