The Delmarva Peninsula fox squirrel is an endangered species now restricted to local populations on the Delmarva Peninsula in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. It lives mostly in mixed stands of mature hardwoods, including groves of trees along streams and in agricultural areas, and mature loblolly pine forests adjacent to salt marshes. It feeds on mast-producing trees such as oak, hickory, beech, walnut, and loblolly pine, and in spring it also eats buds and flowers of trees, fungi, insects, seeds, and occasionally bird eggs and young. Human activities including farming, lumbering, and construction destroyed forest habitat vital to fox squirrels and made conditions more favorable for the more aggressive gray squirrels. Some remaining areas are protected and carefully managed under the Endangered Species Act, and at Blackwater, Chincoteague, and Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuges, nest boxes supplement the leaf nests used by fox squirrels. It is a large squirrel, weighing up to two pounds, silvery-gray in color, with white feet and a bushy tail marked by a pronounced black stripe on the outer edge.