North Carolina’s cotton mouse records sit almost entirely in the Coastal Plain, tracking the wooded swamps and wetland edges around Alligator River and the Great Dismal Swamp rather than the drier Piedmont or the mountains further west. This species reaches close to the northern edge of its range here, and it stays tied to the moist bottomland forest and coastal woodland typical of the deep Southeast rather than spreading into the state’s higher, drier ground.
Inside that swampy cover, cotton mice den in stumps, logs, and abandoned burrows, foraging at night for seeds, insects, and other small invertebrates on the forest floor. That closeness to standing water and dense understory sets them apart from upland mice species that share parts of the same Coastal Plain landscape but avoid the wettest ground.
North Carolina’s records spike sharply in March and drop to almost nothing the rest of the year, a pattern that more likely reflects when small-mammal trapping surveys ran in the swamp habitat this species favors, not a true seasonal absence for the rest of the year.
Full species profile
