The mountain cottontail’s Washington record is an east-side map: of 262 records, Walla Walla County holds 64, and Douglas, Grant, Whitman, Benton, Kittitas, and Yakima counties carry most of the rest. This is shrub-steppe and open pine country, not the wet side most people picture for Washington.
A rabbit of sagebrush and rimrock
Mountain cottontails live where cover is low and dry, in sagebrush flats, rocky draws, and open juniper and ponderosa stands. They graze grasses and herbs through the growing season and shift to sagebrush, bark, and twigs when snow covers the ground. Washington’s record traces exactly that habitat, from the Ginkgo Petrified Forest and the Columbia Basin Wildlife Area Complex to the Juniper Dunes Wilderness Area and the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
At home in every month
Cottontails never hibernate, and Washington’s reports come in all twelve months, rising through April, May, and June when breeding is underway and the animals are most active in the open. Most sightings land in the first and last hours of daylight, when a rabbit can feed with cover close at hand.
Status in Washington
NatureServe ranks the mountain cottontail S5, Secure, in Washington, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
