One number jumps out of Mississippi’s eastern harvest mouse records: 52 of the 59 fall in March. A mouse doesn’t live its whole year in a single month, so that spike is the fingerprint of a survey, almost certainly trapping work in Bienville National Forest, which accounts for 30 records on its own and anchors Scott County’s state-leading total.
Behind the spike sits a quieter spread. Tishomingo County in the northeast hills and Marshall County along the Tennessee line add smaller clusters, with singles and pairs from the Delta down toward the coast. That scatter is probably closer to the truth of the species in Mississippi: a grassland mouse of old fields, broomsedge, and pine savanna edge, present in modest numbers almost anywhere the cover stays rank and unmowed.
NatureServe lists the species as Unranked in the state, another way of saying the record is too thin and too survey-shaped to judge. The lesson cuts both ways. One strong survey can make a county look like a stronghold, and unsurveyed counties look empty. Neither reading is safe, because records show where people worked, and March in Bienville is simply where they worked hardest.
Full species profile
