New York has just two American pygmy shrew records from 2000 to 2026, one from Franklin County in the far north and one from Ulster County, dated February and October. This is one of the smallest mammals on the continent, a shrew that weighs less than a nickel, and New York sits near the southern edge of its range. Cool, damp northern forest is where it belongs.
A shrew this size almost never gets recorded except in a survey trap or an owl pellet, so two records say more about how rarely anyone looks than about where the animal lives. Two dates can’t show a season either; these shrews stay busy under the snow all year rather than vanishing in winter. NatureServe ranks the species apparently secure in New York, and the honest reading of the record is that it’s probably undercounted almost everywhere, turning up only where someone set out to look for it.
Full species profile
