As I have written earlier, many melanistic Eastern gray squirrels have red tails, which leads to bizarre conclusions that these squirrel are hybrid with fox squirrels. Melanistic eastern gray squirrels are generally found in the northern parts of their range, where the native fox squirrel subspecies isn’t black at all.
I’ve never heard of the two hybridizing. Eastern grays don’t even like fox squirrels, and although a single fox squirrel can easily beat a gray up, the grays often gang up the fox squirrels. I’ve seen this many times at bird feeders.
This paticular melanistic gray does have an unusual amount of red on it. I’ve never seen one like this before
The vast array of color phases that can be found in the Eastern gray squirrels is really quite remarkable. They come in normal gray. They come in albino, and they have the aforementioned melanistic form. But there are other colors that are not often mentioned– probably because they aren’t all that widespread.