The eastern cottontail is one of the most frequently recorded mammals in West Virginia’s atlas, with 797 records spread across 47 counties. Monongalia County alone accounts for 244, with Preston and Randolph next in line, while Monongahela National Forest, Potomac Wildlife Management Area, and New River Gorge National Park and Preserve lead the named sites.
A rabbit of edges and openings
This is the rabbit of brushy field margins, hedgerows, overgrown pastures, young woods, and backyard edges, not of unbroken forest. Even in a heavily wooded state, cottontails find their openings, and records inside Monongahela National Forest concentrate around maintained clearings and disturbed ground rather than deep woods. Females raise their young in shallow grass-lined nests on open ground, so a field edge or quiet lawn corner can hold a litter hidden in plain sight.
Spring and summer mean young rabbits
Cottontails stay active through the winter, and West Virginia reports never fall to zero, but counts climb steeply from April through July. Breeding begins in late winter and continues into early fall, with each female raising several litters a year. The warm-season crest in sightings is largely the visible result of that effort, new generations of half-grown rabbits feeding at dawn and dusk along the edges where they were born.
Status in West Virginia
NatureServe ranks the eastern cottontail S5, Secure, in West Virginia, and the species is native across the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
