Only a handful of mammals in Connecticut’s atlas outnumber the eastern cottontail, which appears in 2102 records statewide. Fairfield and Hartford counties lead, but cottontails turn up in every county, and the record rises steeply each year from spring into midsummer.
A rabbit of the edges
Cottontails live where cover meets open feeding ground: old fields, hedgerows, brushy field margins, and overgrown back lots. Connecticut’s patchwork of second growth and suburbia suits them, and places like Sherwood Island State Park, Mansfield Hollow Wildlife Management Area, and the Smith-Hubbell Wildlife Sanctuary all carry records from that kind of broken country. One caution for observers: Connecticut also holds the New England cottontail, a scarcer rabbit of dense thickets that looks nearly identical in the field, so range and habitat matter before calling a rabbit the common species.
A calendar shaped by breeding
The eastern cottontail does not hibernate, and its year-round presence shows even in the lean months of November through February. Numbers then swell from May through July, when does raise successive litters, as many as three or four in a season, and half-grown young begin venturing from the shallow nests hidden in the grass.
Status in Connecticut
NatureServe ranks the eastern cottontail S5, Secure, in Connecticut, and the species is native to its Connecticut range. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
