With 5,896 occurrence records across 96 counties, the eastern cottontail is one of the most widely reported mammals in North Carolina. Wake County alone accounts for more than a quarter of the total, and records run from the Blue Ridge out to Nags Head Woods and the barrier-island thickets of Dare County.
An edge animal, not a deep-woods one
Cottontails live where open feeding ground sits next to dense escape cover, the brushy field margins, fencerows, stream banks, and overgrown lots that the Piedmont supplies in abundance. Eno River State Park and the Piedmont river bottoms hold that kind of seam, and so do the young woods and cutovers of Uwharrie National Forest. Unlike many small mammals, a cottontail does not dig its own burrow. It rests in a shallow depression called a form and relies on stillness and the thicket for protection.
A long breeding season
Reports rise steeply from April and peak through early summer, matching the heart of the breeding season. Females raise several litters a year in fur-lined nests scratched into the ground, and by midsummer newly independent young are everywhere, feeding in the open at dawn and dusk. Rabbits stay active through North Carolina’s mild winters, so reports continue in every month.
Status in North Carolina
NatureServe ranks the eastern cottontail S5, Secure, in North Carolina, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
