The NYC Squirrel Census is back with new results — and a toll-free number

Scientifically speaking, a squirrel is just a rodent, sharing this status with mice and rats, fellow denizens of New York City parks. But something about these wide-eyed, bushy-tailed fearless acrobats draws the attention of any park-goer.

That’s what inspired 72 New Yorkers to venture into parks for a single afternoon in early March 2020 to count and observe squirrels in 24 parks in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Their findings, entitled Squirrels, Parks and the City: A (very serious) data-gathering expedition, were released Friday by The Squirrel Census. The results are accessible through NYC Open Data, a site that publishes free public data provided by city agencies and other groups.

This census, which is run by a rag-tag group of data scientists and moonlighting naturalists, spotted 433 squirrels overall. Tompkins Square Park in the East Village had the most sightings. Four parks — Sternberg and Cooper Parks in Brooklyn as well as Thomas Paine and Sara D. Roosevelt Parks in Manhattan — recorded zero sightings. Grey squirrels were the most common (390 total), followed by cinnamon-colored squirrels (26) and then black squirrels (16). One squirrel entry wasn’t labeled with a color.

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