Of Alabama’s rabbits, the eastern cottontail is the one people actually meet: 817 records spread across 56 counties, led by Madison and Jefferson in the north and Baldwin on the coast, wherever a grassy opening sits next to something dense enough to dive into.
An animal of the edges
A cottontail needs two things side by side, short grass and herbaceous growth to graze and thick cover a single bound away. That puts it along field margins, roadsides, briar thickets, and young forest rather than inside unbroken mature woods, which is why records gather at places like the openings of Little River Canyon National Preserve, Gulf State Park, and the cut edges of Conecuh and Bankhead national forests. Unlike many small mammals it does not dig a burrow of its own, resting instead in a shallow ground form tucked under vegetation.
A spring surge of young rabbits
Counts climb from March to a June crest, then taper into low winter numbers. The spring rise is biology, not accident: breeding runs from early spring into late summer, females raise several litters a season, and by April and May the first young rabbits are sitting out in open grass on their own. Cottontails do not hibernate, but winter rabbits hold tight to thick cover and simply move less.
Status in Alabama
NatureServe ranks the eastern cottontail S5, Secure, in Alabama, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
