Mink need permanent water, and in Texas their records stay in the wetter eastern part of the state. The 74 records fall into two pockets. One is the upper Gulf Coast, where Galveston County logs 10, Jefferson 8, and Chambers 7, a country of coastal marsh, bayous, and slow channels. Sea Rim State Park, on the marshy shore near the Louisiana line, is one of only three named places with a record.
The other pocket surprises people: the Dallas and Fort Worth area. Tarrant County leads Texas with 12 records, and Dallas, Denton, Collin, and Kaufman counties add more, mostly along the Trinity River and the creeks and reservoirs around the two cities. A metro full of people with phones finds the occasional mink that a remote bayou would hide.
No clear season
Texas records don’t build to one obvious peak. June tops the list with 14 and February comes close behind with 11, while December is the low point with a single record. At this scale a couple of reports can lift or sink a month, so the pattern says more about chance than about the mink’s year. East Texas pine country adds a little more, with records at Sam Houston National Forest and Lake Livingston State Park. Seventy-three records come from iNaturalist, and GBIF holds 55, nearly all of them the same sightings. Native to Texas, the mink holds an S4 rank from NatureServe, meaning apparently secure.
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