Connecticut’s New England cottontail record comes with a built-in warning label. This rabbit is nearly identical to the introduced eastern cottontail in the field, so casual sightings mean little, and the 55 reports since 2000 lean on specimens and surveys that could confirm which rabbit was in hand. New London County leads with 23 records, Hartford adds 13, and Fairfield 9, a coastal and central-Connecticut scatter that matches what survey work has found: the native rabbit hangs on in patches of dense young forest and thicket.
The monthly pattern, peaking in November and December, tracks winter tracking and survey effort more than the rabbit’s own behavior, since cottontails don’t hibernate. More sobering is the date on the most recent record, August 2020. NatureServe ranks the species imperiled in Connecticut and the IUCN lists it as Vulnerable, so a quiet few years in the record shouldn’t be read as a recovery, and an old record shouldn’t be read as proof of loss either. Thickets regenerate, and so does the search.
Full species profile
