The eastern cottontail is Colorado’s adaptable rabbit of plains and suburb. Open occurrence databases hold 527 records for it in Colorado, concentrated along the eastern plains and the towns of the northern Front Range.
A generalist on the western edge
Colorado sits at the far western limit of a range that blankets most of the country to the east, and here the eastern cottontail behaves like the opportunist it is. It thrives on brushy field margins, hedgerows, weedy lots, and the green fringes of towns, and that comfort with human-altered land has carried it along the plains and the urban corridor. Boulder, Larimer, and Weld counties, together with refuges such as the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, hold its densest records.
Where the cottontails divide
The state’s cottontails sort largely by habitat, and the eastern cottontail claims the lower, moister, brushier ground of the plains and city fringe, leaving the drier open flats and the higher shrublands to its relatives. Look for it along the seam between cover and clearing, a lawn beside a thicket or a ditch line through farmland, where it can graze and slip back under brush in a stride or two.
When to see it
Sightings climb steeply in spring and stay steady through summer before falling toward winter. The rabbit neither migrates nor hibernates; it simply grows harder to notice in the cold, sheltering in dense cover and switching from green growth to bark and twigs. Dawn and dusk remain the best times to catch one out feeding.
Full species profile
