Muskrats appear in 2,241 New York records, nearly all of them within sight of water. The distribution follows the state’s wetlands and slow channels, from the marshes of Montezuma and Iroquois national wildlife refuges to the Erie Canal, Reinstein Woods Nature Preserve, and the tidal edges at Gateway National Recreation Area.
A builder in the cattails
Where the bottom is soft, a muskrat piles cattails and mud into a lodge with underwater entrances; where banks allow, it burrows instead. It feeds on cattail roots, sedges, and pondweeds from open-water platforms, with mussels and crayfish rounding out the diet, and those feeding platforms and thatch houses are often the first sign of the animal itself. A muskrat is a strong swimmer, with partially webbed hind feet and a flattened, rudder-like tail, and it can stay submerged for many minutes at a time.
Most visible when the ice lets go
Reports climb in March and hold high through June, the season of ice-out, high water, and renewed travel between lodges and feeding beds. Muskrats do not hibernate. Through a New York winter they stay active beneath the ice, working push-up holes and under-ice channels that keep them fed but rarely seen, so the winter record stays quiet even where the animals are common.
Status in New York
NatureServe ranks the muskrat S5, Secure, in New York, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
