Eastern cottontails run to 4,569 New Jersey records, third most of any mammal in the state atlas, and they reach all 21 counties, from Bergen’s suburban yards to the dunes of Cape May Point State Park, which holds the single largest cluster.
A rabbit of edges, not interiors
Cottontails live where two kinds of ground meet: dense, brushy cover for hiding next to open, grassy ground for feeding. New Jersey supplies that mix almost everywhere, in old fields, hedgerows, dune scrub at Island Beach State Park and Sandy Hook, salt-marsh margins at Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, and the landscaped edges of parks like Liberty State Park and Morristown National Historical Park. Rather than digging burrows, a cottontail shelters in thickets and rests in a shallow scrape called a form, so it never strays far from cover.
Three litters before fall
The species stays active through every New Jersey winter, but reports climb steeply from May through July, the heart of the breeding season. A female can raise three or more litters between early spring and late summer, leaving her fur-lined ground nest unvisited most of the day so it draws no attention. By midsummer the state’s fields hold a fresh crop of half-grown young, which is part of why the rabbit is so conspicuous then.
Status in New Jersey
NatureServe ranks the eastern cottontail S5, Secure, in New Jersey. The species is native to the state, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous.
Full species profile
