The hairy-tailed mole spends nearly its whole life underground, and Vermont’s occurrence databases hold just 192 records for it, split close to evenly between iNaturalist entries and GBIF specimen data. That count reflects how rarely this mole turns up on the surface, not how much soil it’s actually working.
Dry ground, not the marsh
This mole needs looser, well-drained soil to dig through, which sets it apart from Vermont’s other common mole, the wetland-loving star-nosed mole. Reports concentrate around Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in the Green Mountains’ eastern foothills, where the till and terrace soils drain well, and along the drier margins of the Champlain Valley’s clayplain country. The wetter silt of the Connecticut River valley’s floodplain bottomlands is a poorer fit, so records there tend to sit on the higher, sandier ground above the river itself.
A summer surge in the record book
Vermont records for this mole cluster hardest in June and July, with a much thinner trickle the rest of the year. That doesn’t mean the mole goes quiet in winter. It keeps digging below the frost line all year, but its surface ridges and molehills, the main clue anyone above ground gets, show up more often once the soil softens and it pushes closer to the surface in early summer.
Status in Vermont
NatureServe ranks the hairy-tailed mole S4, apparently secure, and it’s native to Vermont. It holds a broader range across the Northeast and Appalachians, and Vermont’s well-drained highland and valley soils sit well within that footprint.
