Golden mice carry a NatureServe S5 secure rank in Arkansas, and every one of the state’s 194 records comes through GBIF, with only 6 also appearing on iNaturalist, meaning trapping surveys, not casual photographs, built essentially the entire dataset for this arboreal, nest-building mouse. Ouachita National Forest’s 5 logged sightings anchor the state’s top named site.
February alone accounts for 137 of the 194 records, more than 70 percent of the entire year’s total, an extraordinary spike that almost certainly reflects one large concentrated winter trapping survey rather than any real seasonal explosion in the mouse’s own activity, since golden mice stay active year-round without hibernating.
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