Delaware’s 427 raccoon records reach from the wooded creek valleys around White Clay Creek State Park in the north to the cypress-lined shores of Trap Pond State Park near the Maryland line. New Castle County holds the largest share, with Kent close behind, and the Delaware Bay shoreline is well covered too. This is a statewide animal.
Where water and supper meet
A raccoon likes to live near water, and Delaware is threaded with it: tidal marsh at Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge, the broad impoundment at Lums Pond State Park, wet woods at Redden State Forest and Cedar Swamp Wildlife Area. It is an omnivore with famously nimble front paws, feeling for crayfish, frogs, and clams in the shallows as readily as it strips sweet corn or raids a campground cooler. Hollow trees make the classic den, but in a state this settled a barn, culvert, or brush pile does just as well.
A spring peak and no long sleep
Raccoons do not truly hibernate, though they hole up through hard cold snaps, so Delaware records arrive in every month of the year. They crest in May and June, when females are nursing spring-born kits and the whole family’s hunger keeps them moving well past dark. By late summer the young are nearly grown, and the calendar settles into a steady hum.
Status in Delaware
NatureServe ranks the raccoon S5, Secure, in Delaware, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here, and it is not specifically listed under Delaware’s conservation framework.
