The eastern cottontail is one of the most recorded mammals in Kansas, 1,932 records reaching 98 counties, essentially the whole state. Douglas, Johnson, and Sedgwick counties lead the tally, and Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area tops the named sites, but the real story is ubiquity from the Missouri River bluffs to the High Plains.
An edge animal in the farm belt
A cottontail needs two things close together, open ground to graze and dense cover to bolt into, and Kansas farm country supplies that pairing endlessly. Brushy fencerows, shelterbelts, ditch banks, and the weedy margins between cropped fields all hold rabbits, as do suburban gardens and park edges. It eats grasses and forbs in the growing season and switches to bark, twigs, and buds in winter, and it never digs a burrow of its own, resting instead in a shallow ground depression called a form. Meade State Park, Scott State Park, and the Prairie Center all record the species in exactly this kind of mixed cover.
Breeding through the green months
Kansas reports climb sharply in April and stay high through July, which matches the breeding calendar. A female raises several litters a year, nesting in a grass-lined hollow hidden in plain sight, and by early summer young rabbits are everywhere, feeding at first and last light and freezing at the approach of anything larger.
Status in Kansas
NatureServe ranks the eastern cottontail S5, Secure, in Kansas, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
