Almost all of Virginia’s eastern harvest mouse records come from GBIF specimen and trapping data, 206 of 212 total, with only a handful from iNaturalist photographs. That split makes sense for an animal barely a few inches long that spends its life buried in dense grass; researchers document it through live-trapping surveys far more often than anyone manages to photograph one in the field.
Reports spike hard in April, with 65 records that month alone, then fall to nothing by November and December. That pattern likely tracks when small-mammal survey crews are active in wet meadows and field edges, not a real gap in when the mouse is around.
The refuges tied to its Virginia range, Great Dismal Swamp and Back Bay among them, are exactly the kind of wet, grassy edge habitat this mouse depends on. NatureServe lists it as S5, secure across its Virginia range.
Full species profile
