North Carolina’s muskrat reports cluster hardest across the Coastal Plain, in the shallow wetlands around Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and Lake Mattamuskeet, and in pocosin bog country like the Green Swamp Preserve near the coast. Those flooded peat wetlands and blackwater creeks give the animal exactly the standing water and emergent cattail marsh it needs for lodges and feeding platforms.
In wetlands like these, muskrats dig bank burrows where the ground holds firm, or build dome-shaped lodges from cut cattail stems and mud where the bottom stays soft. Cattail rhizomes and other marsh plants make up most of the diet, so a report often lines up with clipped stems and narrow swim channels cut through dense marsh vegetation.
Records here run year-round but climb from March into June, likely tracking both breeding activity and easier detection once marsh vegetation greens up and animals move more by day.
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